OCT  97  1923 


GfCAL 


B  828  . B4  1923 
Bennett,  Charles  Andrew 
Armstrong ,  1885-1930. 

A  philosophical  study  of 

mvcif  i  r*  i  Qm 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/philosophicalstuOObenn_O 


A  PHILOSOPHICAL  STUDY 
OF  MYSTICISM 


PUBLISHED  ON  THE  FOUNDATION 
ESTABLISHED  IN  MEMORY  OF 
“AMASA  STONE  MATHER 
OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1907,  YALE  COLLEGE 


A 


PHILOSOPHICAL  STUDY 
OF  MYSTICISM 

-AN  ESSAY 

BY 

CHARLES  A.  BENNETT 

ASSISTANT  PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN 
YALE  UNIVERSITY 


NEW  HAVEN 

YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON  •  HUMPHREY  MILFORD  •  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MCMXXIII 


COPYRIGHT  I923  BY  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


The  present  volume  is  the  third  work  published  by  the  Yale 
University  Press  on  the  Amasa  Stone  Mather  Memorial  Publica¬ 
tion  Fund.  This  Foundation  was  established  August  25,  1922,  by 
a  gift  to  Yale  University  from  Samuel  Mather,  Esq.,  of  Cleve¬ 
land,  Ohio,  in  pursuance  of  a  pledge  made  in  June,  1922,  on  the 
fifteenth  anniversary  of  the  graduation  of  his  son,  Amasa  Stone 
Mather.  He  was  born  in  Cleveland  on  August  20,  1884,  and  was 
graduated  from  Yale  College  in  the  Class  of  1907.  Subsequently, 
after  travelling  abroad,  he  returned  to  Cleveland  where  he  soon 
won  a  recognized  position  in  the  business  life  of  the  city  and 
where  he  actively  interested  himself  also  in  the  work  of  many 
organizations  devoted  to  the  betterment  of  the  community  and 
to  the  welfare  of  the  nation.  His  death  from  pneumonia  on  Febru¬ 
ary  9,  1920,  was  undoubtedly  hastened  by  his  characteristic  un¬ 
willingness  ever  to  spare  himself,  even  when  ill,  in  the  discharge 
of  his  duties  or  in  his  efforts  to  protect  and  further  the  interests 
committed  to  his  care  by  his  associates. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction  :  Nature  and  Extent  of  the  Enquiry  .  3 

PART  I 

THE  MYSTICAL  AMBITION 

Chapter  I.  Method  of  Approach . 15 

Chapter  II.  Between  Two  Worlds . 29 

Note.  The  Two  Eyes  of  the  Soul . 45 

Chapter  III.  Union  with  God . 49 

Chapter  IV.  Passivity  and  Its  Meaning  ....  59 

PART  II 
REVELATION 

Chapter  V.  The  Mystic  Claim . 69 

Note.  The  Ecstasy  and  Unconsciousness  ...  83 

Chapter  VI.  The  Immediate  Experience  of  God  .  .  87 

Chapter  VII.  Intuition . 93 

Chapter  VIII.  Intuition  and  Philosophy  ....  103 

PART  III 

RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

Chapter  IX.  The  Problem . 115 

Cpiapter  X.  Morality  Strenuous  All-Too-Strenuous  .  127 

Chapter  XI.  Beyond  Good  or  Evil . 139 

Chapter  XII.  Mysticism  and  the  Problem  of  Evil  .  153 

Chapter  XIII.  Mysticism  and  Freedom  .  .  .  .  163 

Chapter  XIV.  Mysticism  and  Institutions  .  .  .  171 

Chapter  XV.  The  Future  of  Mysticism  .  .  .  .  181 


PREFACE 


I  HAVE  called  this  an  essay,  not  in  order  to  add  an 
otiose  decoration  to  the  title-page,  but  to  correct  the 
anticipations  likely  to  be  aroused  by  the  words  “a  philo¬ 
sophical  study/’  These  imply  that  the  author  has  a 
fairly  definite  metaphysic,  a  theory  of  knowledge,  and 
a  theory  of  conduct,  by  the  aid  of  which  he  undertakes 
to  give  a  comprehensive  interpretation  of  his  subject. 
Unfortunately  I  can  lay  claim  to  no  such  equipment. 
All  I  have  done  is  to  offer  a  certain  identification  of 
mysticism  and  to  point  out  some  of  its  workings  in  the 
general  economy  of  life.  But  even  in  trying  to  do  this 
I  have  raised  far  more  questions  than  I  am  competent 
to  deal  with,  so  that  the  book  is  truly  an  essay,  every¬ 
where  tentative  and  incomplete.  In  a  small  room  I 
cherish  a  guttering  candle,  which  only  intensifies  my 
awareness  of  the  untried  blackness  outside. 

My  chief  debt  of  gratitude  is  to  Professor  W.  E. 
Hocking  of  Harvard.  He  gave  me  my  first  interest  in 
the  subject,  now  a  good  many  years  ago.  His  work  has 
fed  the  intellect  and  aroused  the  imagination.  His 
analysis  of  mysticism  still  seems  to  me  more  dis¬ 
criminating  and  his  estimate  of  it  more  just  than  any 
so  far  put  forward.  It  would  be  impossible  to  specify 
all  the  places  in  the  following  pages  which  owe  some¬ 
thing,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  him. 


INTRODUCTION 

NATURE  AND  EXTENT  OF 
THE  ENQUIRY 


INTRODUCTION 


NATURE  AND  EXTENT  OF  THE  ENQUIRY 

GE  N I U  S  is  for  the  most  part  not  discovered — and 
written  about — until  the  owner  of  it  has  been  a 
long  time  dead.  No  man  is  a  classic  to  his  own  genera¬ 
tion.  The  reverent  (or  is  he  the  merely  cautious?)  his¬ 
torian  will  take  no  notice  of  events  until  the  passage 
of  time  has  conferred  upon  them  a  safe  remoteness. 
Emotion  produces  poetry — when  it  is  remembered  in 
tranquillity.  “The  owl  of  Minerva — ” 

In  general,  it  is  safe  to  surmise,  if  not  to  infer,  that 
much  writing  about  a  subject  is  an  index  not  to  its 
vitality  but  to  the  opposite. 

This  certainly  holds  true  of  mysticism.  In  recent 
years  a  plethora  of  books  has  appeared  upon  mysticism 
and  the  mystics, — biographies,  psychological  studies, 
devotional  works,  works  of  philosophy;  yet  few  ages 
can  have  been  less  mystical  in  temper  than  our  own. 

The  spirit  of  the  time  may  be  right,  and  then  we  can 
only  murmur,  “So  much  the  worse  for  mysticism.”  If 
it  be  dead  and  well  dead,  as  animal  sacrifice  and 
patria  potestas  and  feudalism  are  dead,  then  it  is  a 
subject  only  for  psychological  dissection  or  historical 
record.  Yet  it  may  not  be  dead.  Perhaps  the  truth  is 
that  men  no  longer  know  how  to  use  it;  and  then  so 
much  the  worse  for  those  who  have  forgotten.  In  any 
event  the  issue  cannot  be  decided  offhand.  If  today 
we  are  indifferent  to,  suspicious  of,  or  even  hostile  to, 


1 


4 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


mysticism,  doubtless  good  reasons  for  this  attitude  will 
reveal  themselves  to  inspection.  Let  me  then  set  down 
the  factors  which  seem  chiefly  responsible  for  making 
the  present  mental  climate  uncongenial  to  mysticism. 

First,  we  set  a  high  value  upon  a  life  of  action,  with 
its  obligations  and  its  rewards.  Responsibility,  the  con¬ 
sciousness  of  power  that  comes  with  increasing  control 
over  nature  and  human  life,  the  satisfaction  of  visible 
achievement,  confidence  and  self-respect,  adventure,  a 
literal  historical  existence, — these  are  the  things  that 
seem  good  to  us,  and  no  mere  degradation  of  our  ideal 
in  a  vulgar  doctrine  of  success  can  cancel  their  rightful 
claim  upon  our  loyalty.  To  the  common  judgment, 
mysticism,  by  contrast,  is  a  shedding  of  responsibility 
and  a  retreat  from  life.  The  mystic  is  certainly  a  moral 
loafer  and  probably  a  spiritual  wanton.  He  is  the 
archetype  not  only  of  the  unemployed,  but,  worse  still, 
of  the  unemployed  by  choice. 

I  f  that  other  world  to  which  he  withdraws  from  this 
world  of  affairs  were  a  verifiable  world,  there  might  be 
something  to  be  said  for  him;  but,  as  a  fact  (so  the 
second  objection  runs),  he  retreats  into  his  own  imagi¬ 
nation.  And  there  he  finds  God,  a  God  who  can  be 
seen  and  known  and  loved,  who  imparts  grace  and 
answers  prayer  and  does  other  work  in  the  world.  But 
what  thinking  man  today  can  bring  himself  to  believe 
in  the  existence  of  such  a  being?  True,  on  ceremonial 
occasions  and  for  various  official  reasons  one  professes 
this  belief;  but  these  are  the  requirements  of  public 
life.  There  is  no  conviction  in  these  professions,  nor, 
with  the  best  will  in  the  world,  can  there  be.  For  this 


5 


EXTENT  OF  ENQUIRY 

God  is  a  supernatural  Being  and  in  this  day  of  grace 
(or  lack  of  it),  when  we  are  thoroughly  indoctrinated 
with  the  idea  that  beyond  Nature  there  is  only — more 
Nature,  and  when  the  report  has  gone  out  that  to  hold 
the  contrary  is  ‘unscientific/  it  is  preposterous  that  we 
should  be  asked  to  take  seriously  either  Him  or  His 
followers. 

The  heavens  have  been  emptied  of  God,  but  we  have 
made  shift  to  rediscover  Him,  or  perhaps  to  find  a  sub¬ 
stitute  for  Him,  on  earth.  Hardly  has  naturalism  de¬ 
throned  him  than  a  Comte  appears  to  offer  us  the  wor¬ 
ship  of  Humanity.  The  leaven  of  positivism  works 
powerfully  in  many  directions  among  us  today.  Men 
are  willing  to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  Country. 
The  vaguer  entities  of  The  Race,  Posterity,  Civiliza¬ 
tion,  Society,  The  Beloved  Community,  The  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  on  Earth — are  not  these  but  the  many  names 
of  the  one  God?  Do  not  these  command  our  renuncia¬ 
tion  and  our  worship?  Are  not  these  powerful  to  save? 
Is  not  devotion  to  these  the  test  of  our  current  mo¬ 
rality?  It  is  the  social  conscience  that  is  the  authentic 
voice  of  God. 

But  altruism  is  not  the  only  modern  substitute  for 
religion.  To  humanitarianism  and  patriotism  and  so¬ 
cial  service  we  have  added  science  and  art  and  scholar¬ 
ship.  Any  career  which  is  taken  with  sufficient  imper¬ 
sonal  devotion  and  largeness  of  imagination,  can  now, 
we  think,  perform  the  offices  of  religion.  It  is  as 
though  the  undifferentiated  religious  impulse  had  been 
drained  off  into  a  number  of  secular  channels.  The  man 
who  in  the  Middle  Ages  would  have  led  a  crusade  for 


6 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


the  Holy  Sepulchre,  today  leads  a  crusade  against 
graft  or  social  injustice;  he  records  his  gratitude  for 
favours  received  not  by  building  a  chapel  to  The  Vir¬ 
gin  but  by  building  a  hospital  or  founding  a  chair  in 
a  university.  The  lyric  or  the  musical  composition  has 
taken  the  place  of  the  hymn  of  praise  to  God.  Instead 
of  the  cell  we  have  the  solitude  of  the  laboratory,  the 
observatory,  or  a  desk  in  the  Bodleian.  These  secular 
activities  seem  to  us  sufficient,  taken  separately  or  to¬ 
gether,  to  satisfy  all  that  man  demands  from  his  reli¬ 
gion.  This  is  what  the  service  of  the  immanent  God 
comes  to  in  practice,  and  we  have  no  need  of  any  other 
kind  of  God.  Least  of  all  can  we  desire  the  God  of 
mysticism,  whose  worship  in  some  sense  competes  with, 
and  must  therefore  distract  us  from,  the  pursuit  of 
those  ends  which  we  value  most. 

In  sum,  then,  our  love  of  action,  our  naturalism,  our 
secularism,  are  the  chief  elements  which  today  make 
up  an  atmosphere  in  which  the  mystic  cannot  breathe. 
As  I  have  sketched  them,  they  plainly  imply  a  judg¬ 
ment  about  what  mysticism  is.  If  that  judgment  were 
sound  we  should  not  even  pause  to  drop  a  tear  upon  its 
grave. 

But  we  do  not  accept  it.  The  object  of  this  essay  is 
to  offer  a  revised  interpretation:  to  show  that  mysti¬ 
cism  has  contributions  to  make  towards  the  solution  of 
problems  of  religious  knowledge  and  problems  of  con¬ 
duct. 

There  are  two  sorts  of  persons  who  will  not  let  you 
go  without  a  definition:  the  wise  man  and  the  fool. 
The  difference  between  them  is  that  the  latter  demands 


7 


EXTENT  OF  ENQUIRY 

one  at  the  beginning  of  an  investigation,  while  the  for¬ 
mer  is  content  to  wait  until  the  end.  Nothing  is  to  be 
gained  at  this  stage  by  proposing  a  definition  of  mys¬ 
ticism.  I  shall  simply  indicate  the  scope  of  the  enquiry 
by  making  two  distinctions. 

By  mysticism  is  sometimes  meant  speculative  mysti¬ 
cism,  a  metaphysical  doctrine  which  proclaims  the  ab¬ 
stract  unity  of  the  Godhead  and  the  obliteration  in  it 
of  the  particularity  of  individual  souls  and  finite  ob¬ 
jects.  With  this  doctrine  we  are  not  concerned,  but  with 
mysticism  as  a  way  of  life,  in  which  the  conspicuous 
element  is  the  immediate  experience  of  God. 

Secondly,  mysticism  as  here  used  means  the  mysti¬ 
cism  of  those  who  by  common  consent  are  its  major 
representatives,  a  Plotinus,  a  Teresa,  a  John  of  the 
Cross,  a  Ruysbroeck.  This  is  not  to  deny  that  there  is 
a  multitude  of  lesser  lights  who  bear  some  of  the  marks 
of  the  mystic,  but  whose  claims  to  consideration  rest 
chiefly  on  the  ground  of  pathology.  As  William  James 
says:  “The  classic  religious  mysticism,  it  must  now  be 
confessed,  is  only  a  ‘privileged’  case.  It  is  an  extract , 
kept  true  to  type  by  the  selection  of  the  fittest  specimens 
and  their  preservation  in  schools.  It  is  carved  out  from 
a  much  larger  mass.  .  .  . m  Now,  even  if  our  con¬ 
science  would  allow  us  to  rest  content  with  the  selec¬ 
tion  of  a  group  for  which  we  could  give  no  better 
reason  than  our  own  discriminating  intuition,  there  are 
always  the  critics  to  keep  us  up  to  the  mark.  They  warn 
us  that  such  selection  is  arbitrary,  designed  to  furnish 
an  interpretation  favourable  to  mysticism.  A  more 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  pp.  424-425. 


8 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


generous  induction  would,  they  aver,  lead  us  to  see  in 
it  a  sorry  chapter  in  the  record  of  human  aberration. 
How  is  this  criticism  to  be  met? 

I  answer  at  once  that  I  admit  the  selection  but  not 
its  arbitrariness.  To  begin  with,  most  of  those  who  have 
studied  the  subject,  including  many  who  are  not  fa¬ 
vourably  inclined  to  the  mystics  or  their  claims,  have 
had  to  make  a  broad  distinction  such  as  I  have  men¬ 
tioned.  They  have  found  themselves  writing  quite 
naturally  of  the  great  mystic,  the  true,  the  real,  the  in¬ 
telligent  mystic,  as  contrasted  with  the  inferior  or  mis¬ 
guided  specimen.  This  appeal  to  a  consensus  of  opin¬ 
ion  is,  of  course,  only  external  evidence  and  we  cannot 
stop  with  it.  Nor  are  we  content  to  employ  the  ancient 
device  of  replying  to  the  charge  “You  level  up”  with 
the  retort  “You  level  down” ;  for  the  very  point  at  issue 
is  the  right  to  make  any  distinction  of  levels  at  all.  No, 
the  evidence  so  far  as  it  goes  is  only  presumptive  of 
the  existence  of  a  distinction  which  does  more  than  re¬ 
flect  the  preference  of  any  one  observer. 

The  chief  reason  for  lumping  all  mystics  within  one 
classification  is  the  alleged  fact  that  they  all  exhibit 
in  their  lives  phenomena,  which  I  need  not  here  enu¬ 
merate,  but  which  are  sufficiently  suggested  by  the 
terms  abnormal  or  pathological.  But  to  generalise 
from  this  identity  bespeaks  superficial  observation  or 
reasoning  or  both.  For  the  outstanding  mark  which 
differentiates  the  real  mystic  from  the  pathological 
case  is  that  the  latter  is  the  helpless  victim  of  his  men¬ 
tal  and  physical  troubles,  while  the  former  is  to  some 
degree  master  of  them.  Your  hysterical  patient,  for 


9 


EXTENT  OF  ENQUIRY 

example,  is  literally  a  patient,  at  the  mercy  of  his  im¬ 
pulses,  his  transports,  his  melancholy,  his  automatisms 
of  one  kind  or  another.  The  mystic  is  more  like  a  man 
wrestling  with  a  problem  than  a  man  wrestling  with  a 
disease.  The  contrast  between  the  two  types  is  well 
brought  out  by  Janet  in  a  passage  devoted  to  an  analy¬ 
sis  of  the  suggestibility  of  hysterical  subjects.  “In  sug¬ 
gestion,”  he  writes,  “.  .  .  there  is  no  effort  on  the  part  of 
the  subject,  no  addition  of  strength  from  his  anterior 
tendencies,  no  work  of  his  personality.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  he  does  not  seem  to  realize  the  development  of 
what  takes  place  within  him.  As  has  often  been  recog¬ 
nized,  he  forgets  his  suggestions  as  soon  as  they  are 
ended.  He  seems  to  be  very  little  conscious  of  them 
while  they  are  being  executed.  Very  often  he  executes 
them  without  knowing  it,  quite  subconsciously.  .  .  . 
In  order  that  there  may  be  suggestion,  it  is  precisely 
necessary  that  .  .  .  the  idea  should  seem  to  develop  to 
the  extreme,  without  any  participation  of  the  will  or  of 
the  personal  consciousness  of  the  subject .”2  The  mystic 
realises  what  is  happening  to  him.  He  is  self-conscious 
enough  to  ask  what  these  things  may  mean.  He  has  the 
character  and  the  fixity  of  purpose  to  strive  for  the 
organisation  of  his  inner  life  and  in  this  struggle  to 
make  use  of,  and  so  to  rise  superior  to,  the  accidents 
that  befall  him  on  his  spiritual  pilgrimage.  An  illus¬ 
tration  may  help  to  make  this  clear. 

The  lives  of  many  mystics  have  been  marked,  as  is 
well  known,  by  periods  of  ‘‘dryness.”  These  periods 
may  be  rare  or  frequent,  of  long  or  short  duration. 

2  The  Major  Symptoms  of  Hysteria,  pp.  283-284. 


IO 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


They  are  times  of  acute  mental  torture.  In  the  milder 
forms  of  this  spiritual  aridity  the  subject  feels  indiffer¬ 
ent  and  even  languorous  in  all  that  concerns  his  re¬ 
ligious  and  moral  life :  he  cannot  pray  or  meditate  or 
contemplate — he  does  not  even  want  to  do  these  things; 
he  feels  no  love  for  God  and  none  for  his  fellow  beings : 
the  springs  of  moral  enthusiasm  are  dried  up.  In  the 
later  stages  indifference  yields  to  something  more  terri¬ 
fying.  God  is  not  merely  absent:  His  absence  is  felt, 
one  might  say,  as  a  positive  thing.  The  mystic  comes 
to  doubt  his  certainties;  he  is  assailed  by  obscene  and 
blasphemous  thoughts.  He  loathes  himself.  He  is  con¬ 
vinced  that  he  is  lost.  The  sun  has  gone  out  in  his 
heavens. 

Consider  now  the  effect  of  this  experience  upon  such 
a  mystic  as  John  of  the  Cross.  He  does  not  surrender 
helplessly  to  these  catastrophes ;  his  original  resolution 
does  not  desert  him;  his  hold  upon  his  divine  Object 
is  never  wholly  broken.  He  persists  in  the  attempt  to 
wrest  a  meaning  from  these  things.  The  interpretation 
he  finally  hits  upon  is  that  his  self-scrutiny  had  not 
been  searching  enough,  that  his  moral  purgation  had 
not  been  completed.  It  was  God’s  will  to  discipline  him 
still  more  through  the  extremes  of  anguish  in  order 
that  he  might  be  wholly  purified  in  heart. 

The  worth  of  this  explanation  as  an  explanation  is 
not  here  in  question.  What  is  significant  is  the  sweep 
and  strength  of  the  ambition  which  can  meet  suffering 
in  these  unforeseen  and  terrifying  shapes  and  ulti¬ 
mately  bend  it  to  its  own  purpose.  It  is  this  moral 
stamina  and  this  genius  for  religious  experimentation 


EXTENT  OF  ENQUIRY  n 

which  marks  off  the  authentic  mystic.  1 1  is  the  presence 
of  these  qualities  that  defines  the  type  which  we  are  to 
study.  The  selection  is  not  arbitrary:  to  any  faithful 
observation  it  is  necessary. 

We  have  talked  of  a  thing  called  the  mystic  ambi¬ 
tion.  We  have  claimed  that  it  is  of  crucial  importance. 
But  so  far  we  have  referred  to  it  in  vague  and  general 
terms.  A  closer  study  is  called  for,  and  to  that  we  now 
turn. 


PART  I 

THE  MYSTICAL  AMBITION 


I 


CHAPTER  I 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 

WE  must  begin  with  an  attempt  to  discover  what 
goal  the  mystic  proposes  to  himself,  for  the  pil¬ 
grim  must  be  judged  by  the  shrine  to  which  he  journeys 
and  not  by  the  adventures  or  mischances  which  befall 
him  on  the  way. 

This  seems  an  obvious  and  elementary  principle  of 
interpretation,  yet  one  may  easily  ignore  it  and  come 
to  attach  unfair  importance  to  external  appearances. 
For,  in  the  first  place,  mystical  practice  if  not  unnatu¬ 
ral  is,  to  say  the  least,  difficult  and  unusual.  It  requires 
a  violent  reversal  of  the  ordinary  direction  of  the  will  ; 
one  is  tempted  to  use  about  it  the  expression  which 
Bergson  used  about  the  effort  of  intuition:  it  is  a  re¬ 
mounting  of  the  natural  slope  of  our  minds.  The  mys¬ 
tics  turn  their  backs  on  everything  that  we  include 
under  the  terms  culture  and  civilisation.  They  leave 
behind  the  whole  elaborate  system  of  goods  which  men 
have  discovered  and  laboured  to  establish.  For  action 
they  substitute  contemplation;  for  society,  solitude; 
for  reason,  ecstasy.  There  is  something  so  radical  about 
all  this,  something  so  eloquent  of  spiritual  melodrama, 
that  we  lose  all  patience  with  it.  We  have  no  desire  to 
penetrate  beneath  the  obvious.  It  is  plain  that  what 
we  are  witnessing  is  merely  an  attempt  to  escape  from 
the  hazards  and  responsibilities  of  living.  We  need 
look  no  further  than  the  preliminaries  of  the  journey: 


1 6  A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 

these,  we  say,  are  the  preparations  of  the  renegade 
from  life. 

I  do  not  agree  with  this  estimate,  but  I  can  see  that 
it  needs  a  considerable  exercise  of  sympathy  to  look 
beyond  these  bizarre  external  manifestations  to  the 
purpose  beneath  them.  Yet  one  must  make  the  effort,  as 
one  makes  it  in  seeking  to  understand  enterprises  not 
wholly  unlike  that  of  mysticism.  To  an  external  ob¬ 
server,  the  artist,  the  scholar  in  pursuit  of  useless 
knowledge,  any  devotee  of  the  contemplative  life,  in 
short,  may  well  seem  inefficient  and  “anti-social”  and 
therefore,  in  a  crudely  pragmatic  society,  in  danger 
of  the  judgment.  But  how  much  do  such  appearances 
tell  us  about  the  real  motive  and  consequently  about 
the  real  value  of  these  careers? 

In  the  second  place,  the  temptation  to  judge  mysti¬ 
cism  by  externals  is  strengthened  by  the  prevailing 
psychological  interest  in  religion.  Now  contemporary 
psychology  is  committed  to  the  method  of  illuminating 
experience  from  without  rather  than  from  within. 
Motives  yield  themselves  with  difficulty,  if  at  all,  to 
direct  inspection.  One  must,  therefore,  make  shift  to 
read  them  in  translation,  as  they  are  expressed  in  be¬ 
haviour;  or  one  must  try  to  discover  what  is  going  on 
in  the  mystic’s  mind  by  studying  what  takes  place  in 
his  body.  Moreover,  no  psychologist  can  be  content  to 
take  mysticism  as  an  isolated  phenomenon;  by  using 
comparison  and  analogy  he  seeks  to  place  it  in  a  class 
or  series  of  occurrences  so  that  it  can  be  shown  to  con¬ 
form  to  a  psychological  law  or  to  exhibit  in  greater  or 
less  degree  some  known  tendency  of  human  nature.  An 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 


17 

example  will  serve  to  show  the  method  and  the  dangers 
to  which  it  is  exposed. 

Godferneaux,  in  a  well-known  article,  has  proposed 
to  regard  mystical  states  as  the  reflections  in  conscious¬ 
ness  of  fluctuations  in  coenesthesia  or  alternations  in 
the  level  of  vital  energy.  “La  vie  religieuse,”  he  writes, 
“ou  vie  interieure,  ou  vie  mystique,  ...  a  pour  base 
constante  une  serie  de  faits  organiques  ou  coenes- 
thesiques,  traduits  dans  la  conscience  par  des  etats 
affectifs  et  des  representations  mentales  correspon- 
dantes.  .  .  .  Ces  faits  organiques,  consideres  en  bloc, 
peuvent  se  ramener  a  une  hyper-  ou  a  une  hypotension 
de  Fenergie  vitale.  Les  etats  affectifs  varient  comme 
cette  tension:  on  possede  Dieu  plus  ou  moins,  on  est 
plus  ou  moins  prive,  selon  qu’elle  est  plus  ou  moins  in¬ 
tense/’1 

In  order  to  reach  this  conclusion  Godferneaux  sets 
out  from  the  fact  that  the  ordinary  emotional  life  of 
man  is  subject  to  continual  oscillation:  on  the  one 
hand,  depression,  restlessness,  hesitancy;  on  the  other, 
certainty,  peace,  joy.  For  the  most  part  the  oscillation 
is  not  violent,  but  in  some  cases  the  extremes  are 
strongly  marked.  There  is  a  permanent  physiological 
basis  for  this,  as  noted  in  the  above  quotation.  Mysti¬ 
cism  in  its  purity  is  the  upper  limit  of  this  movement, 
or,  more  accurately,  this  limit  is  the  point  to  which 
mystical  states  tend. 

I  am  here  concerned  only  with  the  limitations  of 
Godferneaux’s  method  if  we  take  it  as  sufficient  for 

1  A.  Godferneaux,  Sur  la  psychologie  du  mysticisme.  Revue 
Philosophique,  t.  LIII,  p.  168. 


1 8 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


purposes  of  explanation.  Note  that  in  regarding  the  re¬ 
ligious  life  as  the  ineffectual  accompaniment  of 
changes  in  the  organism  we  have  tacitly  assumed  that 
the  subject  is  passive.  Mystical  experiences  just  happen 
to  him,  and  we  interpret  his  life  by  these  happenings. 
Godferneaux’s  language  admits  as  much.  “L’extase 
vraie,”  he  writes,  “ne  serait  done  que  Texces  .  .  .  d’un 
etat  que  Ton  doit  ranger  parmi  les  accidents  ordinaires 
de  la  vie  consciente.”  [p.  163]  “C’est  par  l’intermedi- 
aire  de  la  vie  organique  que  .  .  .  nous  participons 
directement,  sans  Fintermediaire  de  la  raison,  a  la  vie 
universelle,  et  nous  en  exprimons  les  vicissitudes !’  [p. 
164.  Italics  mine.]  His  language  shows  that  he  has 
adopted  the  medical  point  of  view  and  is  regarding  the 
mystic  as  a  patient.  The  possibility  of  any  voluntary 
attention  on  the  part  of  the  mystic  is  not  even  con¬ 
sidered,  and  this  exclusion  rules  out  a  fortiori  all  ques¬ 
tion  of  motive.  He  is  not  supposed  to  have  any.  He  is 
represented  as,  quite  literally,  the  victim  of  circum¬ 
stance,  and  his  entire  effort  to  interpret  and  organise 
his  experiences  drops  out  of  sight.  But  to  ignore  this 
is  to  ignore  the  essential. 

We  must  therefore  look  further  than  the  superficial 
circumstances  of  the  mystic’s  career.  True,  in  some 
respects  he  looks  like  a  patient,  just  as  in  others  he 
looks  like  a  renegade ;  but,  apart  from  some  hypothesis 
as  to  his  purpose,  how  shall  we  know  how  to  distin¬ 
guish  between  those  resemblances  which  are  accidental 
and  those  which  are  essential  ? 

Let  us  begin  then  by  examining  some  theories  of  the 
mystical  ambition. 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 


19 


Mysticism  has  so  often  been  allied  with  vast  and 
awe-inspiring  metaphysical  systems  that  the  name  has 
come  to  be  identified  with  a  type  of  solution  for  a  specu¬ 
lative  problem.  Thus  Royce  treats  it  as  one  of  the  four 
historical  attempts  to  define  the  real.  The  mystic  he 
says  defines  the  real,  paradoxically,  as  the  indefinable. 
It  is  that  which  is  all  that  the  finite  is  not,  that  which 
refuses  to  be  caught  in  the  net  of  any  predicate,  that 
simple  unity  which  excludes  all  difference  from  its 
own  nature.  Yet  one  must  doubt  whether  adherence  to 
the  doctrine  of  the  abstract  universal  necessarily  makes 
one  a  mystic.  One  may  hold  that  the  real  is  an  undiffer¬ 
entiated  One,  but  some  further  stroke  of  insight  is 
needed  to  turn  this  into  a  mystical  conclusion.  This  in¬ 
sight  is  the  discovery  that  the  mystic  himself  is  one 
with  what  he  knows,  and,  since  what  he  claims  to  know 
is  reality  itself,  we  may  say  that  he  has  discovered 
what  it  means  to  be  real. 

But  what  thing  dost  thou  now, 

Looking  Godward,  to  cry, 

“I  am  I,  thou  art  thou, 

I  am  low,  thou  art  high”? 

I  am  thou,  whom  thou  seekest  to  find  him ;  find  thou  but 
thyself,  thou  art  I. 

This  is  the  characteristic  mystical  consummation:  the 
achievement  of  union  with  reality.  1 1  is  not  the  knowl¬ 
edge  that  all  things  are  one,  but  the  union  which,  on 
the  basis  of  a  philosophy  of  the  abstract  universal, 
logically  follows  from  such  knowledge,  that  constitutes 
the  mystic  attainment.  If  you  start  from  the  position 


20 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


that  the  distinction  between  the  finite  and  the  infinite, 
between  man  and  God,  is  illusory,  then  the  mystical 
attainment  can  only  be  described  as  an  experience  of 
seeing  through  that  illusion.  The  soul  has  never  been 
separated  from  God  so  one  cannot  talk  of  it  being  re¬ 
united  to  God ;  but  there  was  an  illusion  of  separation 
and  that  illusion  can  be  overcome.  Expressed  in  these 
terms,  the  achievement  seems  almost  indistinguishable 
from  a  purely  cognitive  or  speculative  triumph;  yet 
this  insight  is  not  desired  by  the  mystic  for  its  own 
sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  that  assurance  of  having  found 
one’s  place  in  the  scheme  of  things  which  the  insight 
confers. 

This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  what  we  know  of 
the  temperaments  of  those  mystics  who  have  revealed 
themselves  in  confession  and  autobiography.  Intel¬ 
lectual  doubts  trouble  them  very  little:  they  are  not 
concerned  with  philosophical  problems.  Philosophy, 
indeed,  is  one  of  the  hindrances  which  they  try  to  re¬ 
move.  This  attitude  is  conspicuous  among  the  Chris¬ 
tian  mystics,  but  it  is  not  confined  to  them.  Thus  A1 
Ghazzali,  himself  a  philosopher,  writes  as  follows  of 
his  inner  struggles : 

Coming  seriously  to  consider  my  state,  I  found  myself 
bound  down  on  all  sides  by  these  trammels.  Examining  my 
actions,  the  most  fair-seeming  of  which  were  my  lecturing 
and  professorial  occupations,  I  found  to  my  surprise  that  I 
was  engrossed  in  several  studies  of  little  value,  and  profit¬ 
less  as  regards  my  salvation.  I  probed  the  motives  of  my 
teaching  and  found  that,  in  place  of  being  sincerely  con¬ 
secrated  to  God,  it  was  only  actuated  by  a  vain  desire  of 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 


21 


honor  and  reputation.  I  perceived  that  I  was  on  the  edge  of 
an  abyss,  and  that  without  an  immediate  conversion  I 
should  be  doomed  to  eternal  fire.2 

This  is  not  the  language  of  intellectual  perplexity,  but 
of  a  concern  about  something  quite  different — salva¬ 
tion. 

Salvation  is  a  word  which  has  borne  and  bears  many 
meanings.  Without  attempting  to  examine  these  di¬ 
vergent  renderings  we  can  mark  its  most  general  dif¬ 
ference  from  all  forms  of  intellectual  satisfaction. 

To  experience  ignorance  is  to  be  aware  chiefly  of  a 
bar  to  further  knowledge:  we  are  'at  a  stand.’  We  do 
not  see  through  the  limitation  to  anything  positive  on 
the  far  side.  The  effect  of  the  experience  is  to  create  a 
feeling  of  insecurity  rather  than  of  fear.  When  we  con¬ 
trast  the  religious  predicament  with  this  we  see  that 
it  adds  to  man’s  insecurity  a  sense  of  alienation.  He 
becomes  a  stranger  in  his  world.  At  the  same  time  he 
begins  to  feel  not  only  fear  but  something  worse — 
panic.  We  might  describe  the  contrast  by  saying  that 
in  the  religious  experience  the  limitation  is  beginning 
to  become  transparent.  There  is  at  once  ignorance  and 
some  inkling  of  the  presupposition  of  that  ignorance. 
One  now  faces  not  merely  a  darkness  of  the  unknown 
but  a  darkness  which  conceals  another  presence.  One’s 
problem  is  no  longer  to  lift  the  veil  of  ignorance,  but 
to  remove  the  feelings  of  alienation  and  of  fear  by  mak¬ 
ing  one’s  peace  with  that  which  has  caused  them.3 

2  Confessions  of  A1  Ghazzali,  trans.  by  Claude  Field,  p.  43. 

3  Cf.  W.  E.  Hocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experi¬ 
ence,  ch.  xvi,  and  G.  H.  Palmer,  The  Field  of  Ethics,  pp.  149-166. 


22 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


Let  us  look  at  the  situation  from  a  slightly  different 
point  of  view.  There  are  many  types  of  perplexity  and 
dissatisfaction  which  have  no  religious  significance. 
Thus  the  search  for  a  life  work  may  be  wholly  an  affair 
of  practical  wisdom.  My  uncertainty  about  the  choice 
of  a  career,  if  prolonged,  may  bring  me  to  this  pass: 
I  cannot  discover  a  convincing  reason  to  identify  my¬ 
self  with  any  one  pursuit ;  to  no  one  task  can  I  say :  Be 
thou  my  good.  I  become  highly  critical,  presumptuous 
even.  Nothing  is  good  enough  for  me.  ‘This  world,’  I 
say,  ‘is  no  place  for  me.’  Now  there  may  come  a  moment 
when  religion  steps  in  to  transform  this  groping  and 
to  transform  it  at  first  by  intensifying  the  distress  of 
mind.  It  is  the  moment  when  I  trace  the  source  of  the 
trouble  to  myself,  when  I  see  that  it  is  not  these  human 
tasks  that  are  worthless  but  my  own  vision  which  is 
distorted.  In  short,  it  is  the  moment  when  the  sense  of 
ignorance  becomes  the  sense  of  sin.  What  has  hap¬ 
pened?  “In  first  judging  his  world,  man  seems  to  find 
his  world  judging  him.”  What  could  have  caused  this 
reflection  except  an  experience  which  put  me  for  a 
moment  at  a  point  outside  the  self  from  which  I  could 
see  myself  through  the  eyes  of  another?  May  we  not 
say  that  the  consciousness  of  sin  is  the  consciousness  of 
another  Mind  behind  the  universe,  whose  approval  I 
now  have  to  win  ? 

Thus  the  doubt  which  religion  generates  is  a  doubt 
about  the  moral  relation  of  the  human  soul  to  God.  The 
alternative  with  which  it  torments  man  is  not  that  of 
God  or  no  God  but  that  of  God  remote  or  God  near  at 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 


23 


hand.  Religious  despair  is  born  of  a  sense  of  aliena¬ 
tion,  and  what  religion  announces  as  salvation  is  the 
restoration  of  harmony. 

In  describing  in  this  general  way  the  restlessness  to 
which  religion  gives  rise  we  have  been  at  the  same  time 
describing  the  kind  of  experience  from  which  the  mys¬ 
tic  career  in  most  instances  takes  its  start.  That  long 
and  arduous  spiritual  journey  has  its  origin  in  the 
perception  that  if  reality  seems  evil  this  is  caused  not 
by  anything  in  the  nature  of  things  themselves  but  by 
some  defect  in  the  mystic’s  vision.  What  work  there 
is  to  be  done  must  be  done  on  his  own  soul,  for  it  is 
his  soul  which  excludes  him  from  the  vision  of  reality 
as  divine.  The  world  has  somehow  failed  him;  before 
facing  it  again  he  must  overcome  that  estrangement 
which  separates  him  from  the  God  of  this  world. 

It  may  be  urged  that  we  are  doing  some  injustice  to 
his  career  by  saying  that  it  begins  with  a  moment  of 
defeat.  Often,  it  will  be  said,  the  starting  point  is  a 
moment  of  illumination  in  which  there  is  a  sudden 
perception  of  supreme  worth.  A  film  falls  from  the 
eyes  and  the  world  appears  in  a  new  light.  Things  are 
no  longer  ordinary.  There  comes  the  certainty  that 
this  is  the  real  world  whose  true  character  human 
blindness  has  until  now  concealed. 

Not  where  the  wheeling  systems  darken 
And  our  benumbed  conceiving  soars; — 

The  drift  of  pinions,  would  we  hearken, 

Beats  at  our  own  clay-shuttered  doors. 


24 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


The  angels  keep  their  ancient  places ; 

Turn  but  a  stone  and  start  a  wing! 

JTis  ye,  his  your  estranged  faces 
That  miss  the  many-splendoured  thing. 

The  experience  is  at  first  tantalizing,  alluring.  There 
is  a  rumour  of  a  new  world  and  the  spirit  is  eager 
for  the  voyage  upon  strange  seas.  The  familiar  world 
must  be  left  behind.  The  great  adventure  of  religion 
begins.  “Tout  ce  qui,  dans  cet  etat,  nous  eleve  au-dessus 
des  phenomenes,  c’est  un  souvenir  et  une  esperance ;  un 
echo  affaibli  qui  pourtant  nous  enchante,  et  devant 
lequel  s’efface  tout  ce  qu’on  peut  desirer  sous  le  del.” 

This  is  a  true  account.  Yet  the  logic  of  this  experi¬ 
ence  is  not  essentially  different  from  that  of  the  convic¬ 
tion  of  sin.  To  find  reality  divine  and  to  accuse  one¬ 
self  of  blindness  up  to  that  moment  are  two  sides  of 
the  same  insight:  it  is  an  accident  of  temperament  or 
circumstance  whether  the  emphasis  shall  fall  upon  the 
first  or  the  second. 

I  n  criticising  the  theory  that  mysticism  is  concerned 
with  the  solution  of  intellectual  difficulties  we  have 
suggested  a  different  rendering  of  the  religious  ambi¬ 
tion.  We  have  used  vague  names:  the  desire  for  salva¬ 
tion,  for  union  with  God,  for  the  finding  of  one’s  place 
in  reality.  In  a  later  chapter  we  shall  have  to  essay 
some  less  indefinite  formula.  By  way  of  preparation 
we  may  compare  our  present  interpretation  with  one 
which  has  found  considerable  support  among  psycholo¬ 
gists. 

Murisier  declares  that  most  mystics  whose  mental 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 


25 


history  is  accessible  to  us  have  shown  themselves  in  the 
early  part  of  their  lives  to  be  victims  of  a  radical  and 
extensive  instability.  They  have  been  subject  to  fre¬ 
quent  and  violent  alternations  of  emotion:  no  middle 
path  where  feeling  remains  relatively  uniform  seems 
open  to  them.  Further,  they  have  lacked  the  power  of 
making  decisions.  They  are  constantly  torn  between 
conflicting  temptations:  between  society  and  solitude, 
abstinence  and  self-indulgence.  They  do  not  own,  they 
are  owned  by,  their  impulses.  Intellect  and  imagina¬ 
tion  are  invaded  by  the  same  trouble.  They  cannot  con¬ 
centrate  the  attention,  and  their  most  hopeful  hours 
may  be  interrupted  by  blasphemous  and  obscene 
thoughts  and  images.  Further,  these  mental  sufferings 
are  usually  accompanied  by  physical  ills.  In  short,  life 
with  its  crowding  demands,  impulses,  feelings,  sensa¬ 
tions,  is  too  much  for  them.  These  things  import  into 
the  mind  their  own  multiplicity.  This  is  the  real  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  mystics’  “entanglement  with  the  creatures.” 

The  mystic  discipline  seems  to  be  designed  to  afford 
relief  to  this  condition  of  anarchy,  its  object  to  be  the 
attainment  of  peace  at  any  price.  The  price  is  the  aban¬ 
donment  of  the  attempt  to  integrate  the  competing 
tendencies  and  to  substitute  the  way  of  simplification. 
Proceeding  by  elimination  and  suppression  the  mystics 
succeed  in  putting  the  religious  idea  or  emotion  in  su¬ 
preme  control,  or  rather  in  exclusive  possession.  They 
grow  absorbed  in  the  thought  of  God  or  lost  in  the  love 
of  God  or  they  become  the  passive  instrument  of  the 
divine  will.  With  this  absorption  comes  the  unity  of 
mind  and  the  peace  which  they  sought.  We  see,  then, 


26 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


says  Murisier,  ‘  qu’ils  cherchent  ...  a  substituer  une 
volonte  superieure  a  leur  propre  volonte  et  qu’ils  se 
trouvent  a  Tegard  de  Dieu  dans  la  meme  situation  que 
ces  malades  vis-a-vis  de  leurs  medecins  et  de  leurs 
directeurs.”  “On  le  voit,  le  besoin  religieux  est,  au 
fond,  un  cas  special  de  ce  besoin  general  de  direction/’4 

If  Murisier  is  right  we  should  have  to  conclude  that 
the  mystic  is  interested  primarily  in  his  own  troubles 
and  in  winning  relief  therefrom,  that  he  is  driven  by 
an  almost  uncontrollable  impulse  to  impoverish  his 
mind  until  only  one  idea  or  feeling  is  left,  and  that  the 
whole  process  is  a  subjective  one  in  which  he  is  manipu¬ 
lating  his  own  mental  states. 

Without  attempting  to  criticise  this  account  in  de¬ 
tail  we  may  note  two  objections  which  have  a  bearing 
upon  the  main  purpose  of  our  enquiry.  First,  our  an¬ 
alysis  of  the  kind  of  experience  with  which  mysticism 
begins  makes  it  clear  that  Murisier  has  reversed  the 
proper  order  of  the  facts.  The  mystic  seeks  to  unify  his 
mind  in  order  that  he  may  become  one  with  God.  To 
use  the  familiar  metaphor,  he  endeavours  to  clarify  his 
vision  not  that  he  may  escape  the  discomforts  of  blind¬ 
ness  or  defective  vision,  but  in  order  to  see  reality  as 
it  truly  is.  God  is  not  thought  of  as  a  director  whose 
guidance  is  to  be  used  in  the  conduct  of  life:  He  is 
not  means  but  end ;  He  is  not  used  but  loved.  The  ulti¬ 
mate  direction  of  the  mind  is  outward,  not  inward.  The 
mystic  is  doing  work  upon  himself  not  with  any 
thought  of  self-sufficiency  in  the  process,  but  in  order 
that  God  may  do  work  upon  him. 

4  Murisier,  Les  Maladies  du  Sentiment  religieux,  pp.  37,  36. 


METHOD  OF  APPROACH 


27 


I  n  the  second  place  the  comparison  with  the  relation 
of  patient  to  doctor  is  misleading.  The  mystic’s  atti¬ 
tude  is  wholly  different  from  that  of  the  hypnotised 
subject  who  recalls  the  blessings  of  the  hypnotic  state 
and  implores  to  be  put  to  sleep  again  and  from  that  of 
the  patient  who  asks  for  some  more  of  the  same  drug. 
The  mystic  does  not  think  of  God  as  physician,  for  he 
is  undertaking  to  earn  the  solution  of  his  problems,  so 
far  as  that  is  possible,  and  not  to  achieve  it  by  a  process 
which,  so  far  as  it  is  not  understood,  is,  for  the  mystic, 
magical.  We  miss  the  essence  of  the  mystics’  prepara¬ 
tion  unless  we  see  that  it  is  a  moral  preparation.  They 
know  that  in  order  to  see  God  one  must  be  pure  in 
heart  and  that  there  is  some  moral  necessity  in  the 
divine  response.  They  can  never  be  sure  that  God  will 
or  must  reveal  himself  to  the  waiting  soul — the  ulti¬ 
mate  revelation  is  always  by  virtue  of  the  grace  of  God ; 
but  they  know,  negatively,  that  without  this  moral 
preparation  the  vision  will  not  be  granted.5  In  other 
words,  the  result  of  the  preparation,  when  it  comes,  is 
understood  by  the  mystics  as  in  part  deserved,  for  they 
can  see  here  a  sequence  of  moral  cause  and  effect.  This 
is  not  true  of  the  relation  between  patient  and  doctor. 

I  f,  after  this  scrutiny  of  what  mystic  ambition  is  not, 
we  are  driven  back  to  describe  it  as  the  desire  for 

5  Cf.  Fenelon,  Maximes  des  Saints,  art.  x.  “Les  promesses  sur 
la  vie  eternelle  sont  purement  gratuites.  La  grace  ne  nous  est 
jamais  due;  autrement  il  ne  serait  plus  grace.  .  .  .  Mais,  quoique 
Dieu  ne  nous  doive  jamais  rien,  en  rigueur,  il  a  voulu  nous  donner 
des  droits  fondes  sur  ses  promesses  purement  gratuites.  Par  ses 
promesses,  il  s’est  donne  comme  supreme  beatitude  a  Tame  qui  lui 
est  fidele  avec  perseverance.” 


28 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


union  with  God,  it  is  not  with  a  claim  to  have  estab¬ 
lished  much  that  is  definite.  As  far  as  we  have  gone 
we  have  left  it  an  open  question  whether  there  is  a 
positive  behind  the  negations  of  the  mystic  or  not.  All 
we  have  shown  is  that  the  facts  do  not  necessarily  com¬ 
mit  us  to  the  view  that  he  is  seeking  escape  or  simpli¬ 
fication.  And,  indeed,  the  conception  of  union  with 
God  is  still  so  vague  that  until  we  can  make  this  union 
appear  a  more  positive  thing,  something  which  might 
well  dim  by  its  brightness  the  worth  of  all  objects  of 
the  secular  will,  we  cannot  clear  the  mystic  of  the 
charge  that  he  is  concerned  only  to  avoid  the  world 
and  its  problems.  To  this  estimate  of  his  career  we  now 
turn. 


CHAPTER  II 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 

THE  ideal  of  mysticism  is  accordingly  exactly  con¬ 
trary  to  the  ideal  of  reason :  Instead  of  perfecting 
human  nature  it  seeks  to  abolish  it;  instead  of  building 
a  better  world,  it  would  undermine  the  foundations 
even  of  the  world  we  have  built  already;  instead  of 
developing  our  mind  to  greater  scope  and  precision  it 
would  return  to  the  condition  of  protoplasm — to  the 
blessed  consciousness  of  Unutterable  Reality.” 

Over  against  this  estimate  of  the  mystics  as  the  ni¬ 
hilists  of  human  nature,  the  destroyers  of  form  and  the 
enemies  of  discipline,  let  me  set  a  quotation  from  one  of 
their  number.  “All  those  other  things  in  which  [the 
soul]  once  took  pleasure,  power,  strength,  wealth, 
beauty,  science,  it  now  says  that  it  holds  in  contempt 
(v7TepiSovcra) .  It  would  not  say  this  if  it  had  not  come 
upon  something  better  than  these.”1 

The  statement  of  Plotinus  seems  the  more  just.  The 
mystical  rejection  of  human  goods  does  not  look  like 
the  expression  of  a  destructive  impulse  but  indicates 
rather  the  working  of  the  vision  of  a  good  so  supremely 
valuable  that  “the  world”  by  contrast  appears  worth¬ 
less.  As  James  put  it,  “Their  very  denial  of  every  ad¬ 
jective  you  may  propose  as  applicable  to  the  ultimate 
truth  .  .  .  though  it  seems  on  the  surface  to  be  a  no¬ 
function,  is  a  denial  made  on  behalf  of  a  deeper  yes. 

1  Plotinus,  Enn.,  VI,  vii,  34. 


30 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


Whoso  calls  the  Absolute  anything  in  particular  or 
says  that  it  is  this ,  seems  implicitly  to  shut  it  off  from 
being  that — it  is  as  if  he  lessened  it.  So  we  deny  the 
this,  negating  the  negation  which  it  seems  to  imply  in 
the  interests  of  the  higher  affirmative  attitude  by  which 
we  are  possessed.”2  The  mystics  themselves  have  often 
insisted  that  their  denials  are  so  many  tributes  to  the 
greatness  of  that  with  which  they  deny.  Thus  Suso 
gives  the  standard  explanation  when  he  writes : 
“Hence  a  wise  doctor  says,  that  the  eye  of  our  intelli¬ 
gence,  owing  to  its  infirmity,  is  affected  towards  that 
being  which  is  in  itself  the  most  manifest  of  all  beings 
as  the  eye  of  a  bat  or  a  night-owl  towards  the  bright 
dazzle  of  the  sun;  for  particular  beings  distract  and 
dazzle  the  mind,  so  that  it  cannot  see  the  divine  dark¬ 
ness,  which  is  in  itself  the  brightest  of  all  brightness.”3 
Your  real  mystic  does  not  hate  the  world — he  is  su¬ 
perior  to  it. 

This  attitude  comes  out  with  especial  clearness  in 
the  mysticism  of  Greek  thinkers.  There  are  many  signs 
in  both  Plato  and  Aristotle  of  the  tendency  to  regard 
the  political  and  social  life  of  man  as  at  least  subordi¬ 
nate  to  the  contemplative  life,  as  though  he  who  had 
entered  upon  the  latter  had  more  certainly  realised 
human  destiny.  In  Neoplatonism  this  judgment 
emerges  frankly.  Plotinus’  treatment  of  the  virtues  is 
determined  by  his  view  of  them  as  a  preparation  for 
the  ultimate  mystic  attainment.  Each  of  the  three  types, 
the  cathartic,  the  political,  and  the  theoretical,  is  an 

2  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  416. 

3  Life,  trans.  by  T.  F.  Knox,  ch.  lv. 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


3i 


embodiment  of  ‘form.’  They  represent  successive  ap¬ 
proximations  to  the  principle  of  pure  form  and  the 
practice  of  them  likens  man  to  the  divine.  But  since  the 
mystic  has  immediately  experienced  that  at  which  they 
all  aim — pure  form — he  can  afford  to  look  upon  them 
as  having  merely  propaideutic  value.  As  to  St.  Paul 
the  Law  was  a  schoolmaster,  so  to  Plotinus  the  disci¬ 
pline  of  the  moral  life  becomes  in  retrospect  a  super¬ 
seded  instrument  for  one  who  has  achieved  the  good 
which  this  discipline  was  designed  to  introduce.4  Pre¬ 
cisely  the  same  scheme  of  values  reappears  in  the  tra¬ 
ditional  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Three  Ages — The 
Age  of  the  Father,  The  Age  of  the  Son,  The  Age  of 
The  Spirit.  The  first  is  an  age  of  law,  the  second  of 
priests  and  sacraments,  the  third  of  freedom.5  The 
mystic,  as  it  were,  forestalls  the  processes  of  history  by 
anticipating  in  his  own  life  the  enjoyment  of  the  last 
age. 

But  one  may  better  appreciate  this  temper  of  serene 
detachment  by  turning  from  abstract  statements  to  the 
experience  itself.  I  give  two  examples  of  it. 

Among  several  fourteenth-century  documents  of 
English  mysticism  there  is  one  by  an  unknown  writer 
called  An  Epistle  of  Discretion  in  Stirrings  of  the 
Soul.  It  is  a  reply  to  one  who  sought  advice  on  some 
matters  of  the  spiritual  life.  “Thou  askest  me  counsel 
of  silence  and  of  speaking,  of  common  dieting  and  of 
singular  fasting,  of  dwelling  in  company  and  only 

4  Enn.,  I,  ii,  2. 

5  Cf.  H.  Delacroix,  Le  Mysticisme  speculatif  en  Allemagne  au 
Quatorzieme  Siecle,  pp.  42  ff. 


32 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


woning  by  thyself.”  The  substance  of  the  reply  is  that 
these  things  are  neither  good  nor  bad  in  themselves; 
they  are  bad  only  when  “conceived  on  the  ape’s  man¬ 
ner.”  “And  thereto  when  thou  seest  that  all  such  works 
in  their  use  may  be  both  good  and  evil;  I  pray  thee, 
leave  them  both,  for  that  is  the  most  ease  for  thee  to 
do,  if  thou  wilt  be  meek,  and  leave  the  curious  behold¬ 
ing  and  seeking  in  thy  wits  to  look  whether  is  better. 
But  do  thou  thus :  set  the  one  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
other  on  the  other,  and  choose  thee  a  thing  which  is 
hid  between  them;  the  which  thing,  when  it  is  had, 
giveth  thee  leave  in  freedom  of  spirit  to  begin  and  to 
cease  in  holding  any  of  the  others  at  thine  own  full  list, 
without  any  blame.  I  shall  tell  thee  what  I  mean  that 
it  is:  It  is  God.”6 

The  author  of  the  Theologia  Germanica  distin¬ 
guishes  “four  sorts  of  men  who  are  concerned  with 
order,  law  and  customs.”  “The  first  are  obedient  from 
constraint,  the  second  for  the  sake  of  reward.  The  third 
are  wicked  false-hearted  men,  who  dream  and  deqlare 
that  they  are  perfect  and  need  no  ordinances,  and 
make  a  mock  of  them.  .  .  .The  fourth  are  those  who 
are  enlightened  with  the  True  Light,  who  do  not  prac¬ 
tise  these  things  for  reward,  .  .  .  but  all  that  they  do 
is  from  love  alone.  And  these  are  not  so  anxious  and 
eager  to  accomplish  much  and  with  all  speed  as  the 
second  sort,  but  rather  seek  to  do  things  in  peace  and 
good  leisure;  and  if  some  not  weighty  matter  be  neg¬ 
lected  they  do  not  therefore  think  themselves  lost,  for 
they  know  very  well  that  order  and  fitness  are  better 

6  Printed  in  The  Cell  of  Self-Knowledge,  ed.  by  E.  G.  Gardner. 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


33 


than  disorder,  and  therefore  they  choose  to  walk  or¬ 
derly,  yet  know  at  the  same  time  that  their  salvation 
hangeth  not  thereon.”1 

Here,  we  may  say,  is  an  attitude  of  audacious  su¬ 
periority,  yet  what  is  most  significant  in  it  is  that  the 
mystic  makes  no  point  of  its  audaciousness.  There  is 
nothing  defiant  or  obstreperous  here;  the  language  is 
not  the  violent  language  of  the  revolutionary,  but  the 
quiet  (and,  to  some,  the  exasperating)  assurance  of  one 
who  holds  himself  to  have  known  and  enjoyed  that 
absolute  good  towards  which  human  ambition  in  its 
multiple  forms  is  directed.  I  say  that  the  absence  of 
violence  is  the  most  notable  thing  here  because  the 
appeal  to  something  beyond  society  and  beyond  mo¬ 
rality  may  so  easily  turn  into  a  blind  hostility  to  both. 
You  can  hardly  take  seriously  that  requirement  of 
absolute  detachment  from  the  world  without  coming 
in  time  to  exploit  your  own  opposition,  making  a 
virtue  of  your  difference  from  the  common  run  of  men 
and  so  falsifying  your  own  intention.8  History  fur¬ 
nishes  too  many  examples  of  this  perversion  of  the  will 
in  religion  for  us  to  doubt  the  dangers  of  any  attempt 
to  find  a  short  cut  to  ultimate  satisfaction.  Yet  to  judge 

7  Ch.  xxxix.  Italics  mine. 

8  Asceticism  as  a  method  of  attaining  complete  detachment  has 
been  shown  by  experience  to  be  inadequate.  The  lives  of  Gautama 
Buddha,  Suso,  Madame  Guyon,  for  example,  afford  plenty  of  evi¬ 
dence  in  support  of  this  statement.  And  it  failed  not  only  because  the 
attempt  to  drive  out  will  by  will  is  doomed  to  defeat — where  ni¬ 
hilism  becomes  necessary  it  is  for  that  reason  absurd;  but  also 
because  human  nature  is  not  so  constituted  that  it  can  wage  ve¬ 
hement  and  incessant  war  upon  its  impulses  without  coming  in 
time  to  pride  itself  upon  its  own  belligerency. 


34 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


mysticism  by  those  who  have  succumbed  to  this  tempta¬ 
tion  is  to  overlook  the  fact  that  mysticism  contains  both 
a  safeguard  and  a  corrective.  Whenever  it  has  led  to 
antinomianism  there  have  been  found  champions  of 
a  saner,  because  more  self-conscious,  mysticism,  to  re¬ 
buke  and  disown  these  self-styled  claimants  to  the 
inner  light.  The  passage  quoted  from  the  Theologia 
Germanica  is  typical  in  this  respect.9  One  might  give 
many  other  illustrations,  but  the  meaning  of  them  all 
is  this:  that  the  mystic  himself  is  able  to  distinguish 
between  “beyond-man”  and  “hostile-to-man.”  His  ulti¬ 
mate  ambition  is  continuous  with,  if  other  than,  those 
human  purposes  whose  worth  he  seems  to  deny. 

We  might  express  this  in  another  way  by  saying  that 
while  contemplation  is  pursued  for  its  own  sake  and 
not  for  the  sake  of  action,  it  seems  to  have  some  neces¬ 
sary  connection  with  action.  Let  us  first  establish  the 
fact  of  this  connection  and  then  seek  for  some  under¬ 
standing  of  it.  To  begin  with,  it  is  clear  that  the  mys¬ 
tics  do  not  seek  God  in  order  to  return  to  the  world 
better  fitted  for  active  life.  The  specifically  moral  needs 
may  be  present  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  preparation, 
but  these  needs,  with  others,  are  destined  to  be  put 
under  as  they  gather  themselves  into  “a  piercing  act 
of  direction,  a  naked  intent  of  the  will  fastening  itself 
upon  God.”  Worship  to  be  worship  must  be  wholly  dis¬ 
interested.  And  the  consummation  of  it  carries  a  con¬ 
viction  of  finality.  Plotinus  speaks  for  all  the  mystics 
when  he  says,  “When  in  this  state  the  soul  would  ex¬ 
change  its  present  condition  for  nothing,  no,  not  for 

9  Cf.  Ruysbroeck,  Book  of  Supreme  Truth,  ch.  iv. 


4 

■) 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


35 


the  very  heaven  of  heavens ;  for  there  is  nothing  better, 
nothing  more  blessed  than  this.”10 

Yet  there  is  something  paradoxical  about  this 
finality :  it  must  be  in  some  sense  surrendered  in  order 
to  be  retained.  Contemplation  seems  to  demand  action. 
Mystics  have  commonly  insisted  upon  the  transiency 
of  the  ecstasy,  but,  as  has  been  acutely  pointed  out,11 
while  they  have  expressed  regret  at  this  they  have  not 
expressed  surprise.  In  this  they  tacitly  admit  that 
there  is  some  organic  bond  between  the  two  directions 
of  attention  represented  by  God  and  the  world.  Many 
of  them  have  gone  further:  they  have  clearly  recog¬ 
nised  the  existence  of  the  alternation  and  have  tried  to 
explain  it.  I  will  give  some  examples. 

If  then  a  man  sees  himself  become  one  with  the  One,  he 
has  in  himself  a  likeness  of  the  One,  and  if  he  passes  out 
of  himself,  as  an  image  to  its  archetype,  he  has  reached  the 
end  of  his  journey.  And  when  he  comes  down  from  his 
vision,  he  can  again  awaken  the  virtue  that  is  in  him,  and 
seeing  himself  fitly  adorned  in  every  part  he  can  again 
mount  up  through  virtue  to  spirit,  and  through  wisdom  to 
God.12 

Christian  mystics  employ  a  variety  of  images,  the  most 
familiar  of  which  are  Martha-and-Mary,  The  Two 
Eyes  of  the  Soul  and  metaphors  drawn  from  human 
love.  I  give  an  example  of  each. 

10  Enn.,  VI,  vii,  34.  Inge,  The  Philosophy  of  Plotinus,  II,  p.  134. 

11  W.  E.  Hocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience, 
p.  390. 

12  Plotinus,  Enn.  VI,  ix,  11.  This  is  a  summary  of  Plotinus’ 
teaching  on  this  point.  For  an  admirable  exposition  see  Inge,  op. 
cit.,  vol.  II,  lecture  xxi,  especially  pp.  178-181  and  201-203. 


36 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


Pour  donner  a  Notre  Seigneur  une  hospitalite  parfaite  il 
faut  que  Marthe  et  Marie  se  joignent  ensemble.  [Teresa, 
Chat.  Int.  Septieme  demeure,  ch.  iv,  ed.  Bouix.] 

The  Two  Eyes  of  the  Soul  are  those  with  which  we 
look  into  Time  and  Eternity.  In  Boehme’s  second 
Dialogue  of  the  Supersenstial  Life  the  disciple  asks  the 
master  whether  the  use  of  the  right  eye,  that  is,  the 
eye  which  looks  into  Eternity,  will  'not  destroy  na¬ 
ture.’  The  master  replies: 

By  no  means  at  all.  It  is  true,  the  evil  nature  will  be  de¬ 
stroyed  by  it;  but  by  the  destruction  thereof  you  can  be  no 
loser,  but  very  much  a  gainer.  The  eternal  band  of  nature 
is  the  same  afterward  as  before,  and  the  properties  are  the 
same.  So  that  nature  hereby  is  only  advanced  and  melio¬ 
rated,  and  the  light  thereof,  or  human  reason,  by  being 
kept  within  its  due  bounds,  and  regulated  by  a  superior 
light,  is  only  made  useful.  .  .  .  Both  eyes  may  become  very 
useful  if  ordered  aright;  and  both  the  divine  and  natural 
light  may  in  the  soul  subsist  together,  and  be  of  mutual 
service  each  to  the  other. 

In  primo  gradu  fit  desponsatio,  in  secundo  nuptiae,  in 
tertio  copula,  in  quarto  puerperium.  .  .  .  De  quarto  dicitur, 
concepimus,  et  quasi  parturivimus  et  peperimus  spiritual.13 

The  explanations  proposed  by  the  mystics  fall  into 
two  classes,  one  metaphysical,  the  other  psychological. 
According  to  the  first,  it  is  the  body  which  stands  in  the 
way  of  permanent  ecstasy  and  union.  “Why,  then,” 

13  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  De  quatuor  gradibus  violentae  Charita- 
tis.  Migne,  Pat.  Lat.,  vol.  191,  col.  1216.  One  may  compare  with  this 
the  Platonic  t6kos  tv  Ka\$  and  that  rendering  of  the  Incarnation  by 
some  Christian  mystics  as  a  birth  of  Christ  which  takes  place  in  the 
individual  soul. 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


37 


asks  Plotinus,  “does  not  the  soul  abide  yonder?  Be¬ 
cause  it  has  not  yet  wholly  left  its  eternal  abode.  But 
the  time  will  come  when  it  will  enjoy  the  vision  with¬ 
out  interruption,  no  longer  troubled  with  the  hin¬ 
drance  of  the  body.”14  And  St.  John  of  the  Cross 
writes,  “As  to  actual  union,  .  .  .  there  is  not,  and  can¬ 
not  be  in  this  life,  any  abiding  union  in  the  faculties 
of  the  soul,  but  only  that  which  is  passing.”15  “This 
wonderful  onehead,”  declares  Walter  Hilton,  “may 
not  be  fulfilled  perfectly,  continually  and  wholly  in 
this  life,  for  the  corruption  of  the  flesh,  but  only  in  the 
bliss  of  Heaven.”16  The  Christian  mystics  have  not  per¬ 
ceived  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  this  doctrine  with 
the  idea  of  spiritual  marriage  or  transforming  union, 
— a  state  in  which  an  uninterrupted  feeling  of  God’s 
presence  is  combined  with  action,  and  which  for  many 
constitutes  the  consummation  of  the  mystical  life.  And 
as  a  fact  it  is  impossible  to  harmonise  a  view  of  mysti¬ 
cism  which  traces  the  necessity  for  the  rhythmic  move¬ 
ment  between  contemplation  and  action  to  our  finite 
constitution  with  a  view  which  looks  towards  the  aboli¬ 
tion  of  that  rhythm  within  this  life. 

14  Enn.,  VI,  ix,  10. 

15  Ascent  of  Mount  Carmel,  Book  II,  ch.  5.  Italics  mine. 

16  The  Song  of  Angels.  The  Cell  of  Self-Knowledge,  p.  64.  I 
may  add  here,  for  the  sake  of  contrast,  an  extract  from  a  mystic 
who  writes  in  a  sense  opposed  to  that  of  the  above  quotations. 

“Truly  if  any  man  might  get  both  lives,  that  is  to  say  contem¬ 
plative  and  active,  and  keep  and  fulfil  them,  he  were  full  great; 
that  he  might  fulfil  bodily  service,  and  nevertheless  feel  the  heavenly 
sound  in  himself,  and  be  melted  in  singing  into  the  joy  of  heavenly 
love.  I  wot  not  if  ever  any  mortal  man  had  this.  To  me  it  seems 
impossible  that  both  should  be  together.”  Richard  Rolle,  The  Fire 
of  Love,  ch.  xxi,  ed.  by  F.  M.  Comper. 


38 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


The  other  type  of  explanation  invokes  the  kind  of 
psychological  necessity  by  which  inspiration  passes 
into  expression  or  love  into  generosity.  Thus  Ruys- 
broeck  writes : 

God  comes  to  us  without  ceasing  .  .  .  and  demands  of 
us  both  action  and  fruition,  in  such  a  way  that  the  one 
never  impedes  but  always  strengthens  the  other.  And  there¬ 
fore  the  most  inward  man  lives  his  life  in  these  two  ways : 
namely  in  work  and  in  rest.  And  in  each  he  is  whole  and 
undivided;  for  he  is  wholly  in  God  because  he  rests  in 
fruition,  and  he  is  wholly  in  himself  because  he  loves  in 
activity :  and  he  is  perpetually  called  and  urged  by  God  to 
renew  both  the  rest  and  the  work.  And  the  justice  of  the 
spirit  desires  to  pay  every  hour  that  which  is  demanded  of 
it  by  God.  .  .  .  This  just  man  has  established  a  true  life  in 
the  spirit,  in  rest  and  in  work,  which  shall  endure  eternally; 
but  after  this  life  it  shall  be  changed  into  a  higher  state.” 
[. Adornment  of  the  Spiritual  Marriage ,  ch.  lxv,  trans.  by 
C.  A.  Wynschenk  Dom.] 

And  so  Fenelon : 

II  est  toujours  egalement  vrai  que  plus  Fame  re£oit  de 
Dieu  plus  elle  doit  lui  rendre  ce  qu’elle  en  a  regu.  C'est  ce 
flux  et  reflux  qui  fait  tout  Tordre  de  la  grace  et  toute  la 
fidelite  de  la  creature.  \Maximes  des  Saints,  art.  xxix.] 

I  cannot  help  thinking  that  Plotinus  in  such,  a  typi¬ 
cal  passage  as  the  following  is  really  transferring  to 
the  Godhead  that  urgent  need  for  self-expression 
which  properly  pertains  to  the  mystic  experience  itself. 
His  problem,  of  course,  is  why  the  One  should  be  dif¬ 
ferentiated  into  the  multiple  life  of  the  universe.  “Why 
should  we  suppose  that  the  One  would  remain  standing 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


39 


still  in  itself?  From  envy?  Or  from  want  of  power, 
though  it  is  the  power  of  all  things ?”  \Enn.,  V,  iv,  i.] 

So  much  for  the  explanations  offered  by  the  mystics. 
How  are  we  ourselves  to  interpret  the  matter? 

It  is  perhaps  natural  at  first  to  look  for  analogies  in 
the  mechanical  and  the  organic  rhythms.  The  meta¬ 
phors  ready  to  hand  aid  and  abet  this  tendency,  and  so 
we  find  terms  like  systole  and  diastole,  flux  and  reflux, 
expansion  and  contraction,  occurring  frequently  in  de¬ 
scriptions  of  mysticism.  Here  is  a  typical  statement  of 
this  kind.  “La  vie  marche  par  palpitations,  par  alter¬ 
nations  d’elans  et  de  recueillements,  comme  le  son, 
comme  la  lumiere,  comme  la  vie  meme  de  notre  terre 
qui  n’est  que  vicissitude  de  nuit  et  de  jour,  et  d’hiver 
qui  se  recueille  et  d’ete  qui  s’epanouit.”17 

What  is  little  more  than  descriptive  terminology 
with  such  an  observer  becomes  a  principle  of  explana¬ 
tion  with  the  psychologist.  Mysticism  is  now  read  as 
the  psychical  equivalent  of  some  bodily  oscillation,  as 
with  Godferneaux,  or  is  identified  with  some  instinc¬ 
tive  rhythm,  as  in  the  following  passage:  “Mysticism 
is  the  most  primitive  of  feelings  and  only  visits  formed 
minds  in  moments  of  intellectual  arrest  and  dissolu¬ 
tion.  ...  In  the  Life  of  Reason  it  is,  if  I  may  say  so, 
a  normal  disease,  a  recurrent  manifestation  of  lost 
equilibrium  and  interrupted  growth;  but  in  these 
pauses,  when  the  depths  rise  to  the  surface  and  ob¬ 
literate  what  scratches  culture  may  have  made  there, 
the  rhythm  of  life  may  be  more  powerfully  felt.”18  I 

17  Quoted  by  Godferneaux,  Revue  Philosophique,  vol.  53,  p.  165. 

18  Santayana,  Reason  in  Religion,  pp.  277-278. 


40 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


believe  that  all  such  explanations  miss  what  is  essen¬ 
tial  and  that  in  this  matter  the  mystic  is  a  better  guide 
to  the  understanding  of  the  experience  than  the  out¬ 
sider.  For,  in  the  first  place,  the  mystic’s  problem  is  a 
problem  of  idea.  By  that  I  mean  that  his  renunciation 
of  the  world  is  initiated  not  merely  by  a  feeling  of 
alienation  from  that  world  but  by  a  judgment  of  self- 
condemnation.  The  world  is  no  place  for  him:  in 
order  to  find  life  good  again  he  must  make  himself 
over.  And  this  means,  among  other  things,  making  his 
mind  over.  No  mere  automatic  and  instinctive  re-crea¬ 
tion  of  value  such  as  may  come  through  rest,  sleep, 
“wise  passiveness,’’  subconscious  relief  of  any  kind,  can 
give  the  mystic  what  he  wants.  You  can  dispose  of  a 
problem  in  two  ways:  one  is  by  ceasing  to  put  it,  the 
other  is  by  solving  >it.  The  latter  is  the  way  of  the 
mystic. 

Secondly,  the  moral  quality  of  the  mystic’s  prepara¬ 
tion  marks  it  off  from  the  more  ‘natural’  methods  of 
self-recovery. 

Thirdly,  the  preparation  involves  concentration 
rather  than  relaxation:  it  is  more  like  taking  aim,  or 
composing  the  mind  in  order  to  appreciate  a  work  of 
art  than  it  is  like  (say)  yielding  to  sleep. 

These  three  objections  may  be  summed  up  in  one 
statement:  mysticism  is  a  deliberate  undertaking  to 
recover  the  principle  of  value  self-consciously.  That  is 
why  those  mystics  and  those  interpreters  of  mysticism 
are  right  who  do  not  hope  to  find  the  explanation 
wholly  contained  within  the  field  of  the  natural  and  in¬ 
stinctive  rhythms  of  life,  and  who  therefore  look  to 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


4i 


what  takes  place  in  the  mind  rather  than  to  what  takes 
place  in  the  body. 

Yet  here,  above  all,  it  is  rash  to  be  dogmatic.  There 
is  no  need  to  deny  that  the  mystical  flight  to  the  Alone 
may  have  an  instinctive  basis.  “The  soul,”  it  has  been 
well  said,  “has  an  instinct  of  balance  as  well  as  the 
body,” — a  highly  generalised  instinct  such  as  recent 
psychology  has  made  much  of.  And  it  is  true  that  at 
the  end  of  his  preparation  the  mystic  surrenders  him¬ 
self  to  the  working  of  some  cosmic  principle  which  he 
does  not  claim  wholly  to  understand.  Further,  it  is 
true  that  there  is  an  element  of  deliberateness  in  many 
of  the  familiar  methods  by  which  we  try  to  recover  our 
sense  of  the  worth  of  life.  The  difference  between  this 
sort  of  thing  and  mystic  practice  is  largely  one  of  de¬ 
gree.  The  mystics  are  simply  more  thorough,  more  de¬ 
liberate,  and  more  scrupulous  in  this  regard  than  the 
rest  of  us. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  answer  the  question  with 
which  the  first  part  of  this  chapter  was  concerned.  I 
said  that  the  mystic  ambition  was  directed  upon  some¬ 
thing  other-than-  the  world,  but  that  other-than-  need 
not,  and  indeed  did  not,  mean  hostile-to-  the  world. 
The  question  was  how  to  construe  this  relationship. 
Otherwise  expressed  the  problem  was  this :  on  the  one 
hand  the  mystics  declare  that  the  moment  of  ecstasy 
introduces  one  to  a  final  and  absolute  good ;  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  how  can  there  be  anything  final  in  an  ex¬ 
perience  which  by  some  profound  necessity  has  to  be 
completed  by  a  return  to  the  world? 

It  will  not  be  until  the  end  of  this  study  that  I  shall 


42 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


be  able  to  offer  anything  like  an  adequate  reply.  At 
this  point  I  will  merely  suggest  the  line  that  reply  will 
take. 

It  is  one  thing  to  have  an  experience  of  an  absolute 
good;  it  is  another  to  retain  that  good.  I  suppose  that 
every  lover  knows  that  in  love  he  has  somehow  touched 
finality:  here  is  a  foretaste  of  his  destiny.  Yet  lovers 
come  to  learn  that  they  can  only  keep  the  meaning  of 
the  experience  by  letting  it  go :  to  try  to  perpetuate  it 
by  dwelling  in  it  is  fatal.  The  meaning  of  love  must  be 
worked  out,  for  love  is  a  metaphysical  experience,  dis¬ 
covering  to  one  not  only  the  beloved,  but  making  all 
things  new.  The  new  truth  has  been  grasped,  but  it 
remains  to  be  assimilated.  So  with  the  relation  between 
the  mystic  and  God :  if  he  is  to'* retain  what  God  means 
he  must  let  God  go,  or,  more  accurately,  he  must  sur¬ 
render  the  exclusive  direction  of  the  mind  upon  God 
and  establish  in  the  world  the  God  to  find  whom  he 
left  the  world.  The  problem,  in  short,  has  arisen  from 
a  mistaken  inference,  the  inference  that  because  the 
value  experienced  is  final  therefore  the  experience  of 
it  is  final.  This  does  not  follow.  As  a  fact,  it  is  just 
because  the  value  is  final  that  the  experience  of  it  can¬ 
not  be  so.  It  is  just  because  the  love  of  God  is  disin¬ 
terested  that  it  has  power  to  transform  the  individual’s 
world.  Here  as  elsewhere  we  best  serve  the  relative  by 
aiming  at  the  absolute.  “Some  men,”  said  Lao-Tze, 
“make  themselves  lowly  for  the  sake  of  conquering; 
others  are  lowly  and  therefore  conquer.”19 

19  The  return  to  the  world  is  not  so  much  part  of  the  mystic’s 
intention  as  a  test  of  its  quality.  St.  Teresa  more  than  any  other 


BETWEEN  TWO  WORLDS 


43 


mystic  with  whose  writings  I  am  acquainted  insists  upon  this.  As 
is  well  known,  she  was  much  concerned  about  the  genuineness  of 
her  revelations.  With  characteristic  independence  she  rejected  all 
confessors  who  did  not  confirm  her  own  judgment  in  spiritual 
affairs;  but  that  judgment  itself  followed  this  criterion:  Any  love 
of  God  which  does  not  increase  the  love  for  your  neighbour  is  false. 
E.g.,  “II  me  semble  que,  dans  l’etat  dont  je  viens  de  parler  [i.e., 
Toraison  de  quietude],  la  volonte  doit  etre  unie  en  quelque  maniere 
a  celle  de  Dieu.  Mais  c’est  par  les  effets  et  par  les  oeuvres  que  Ton 
connait  la  verite  de  ce  qui  s’est  passe  dans  roraison.”  Chat.  Int.,  ed. 
Bouix,  p.  318.  For  similar  statements  see  pp.  328,  354,  355,  of 
the  same  work. 


NOTE 


THE  TWO  EYES  OF  THE  SOUL 

THE  rather  extraordinary  use  of  this  image  of  the 
two  eyes  of  the  soul  seems  to  have  had  a  long  his¬ 
tory.  The  earliest  example  of  it  that  I  have  discovered 
is  in  Origen. 

He  then  addresses  to  us  these  words :  “If,  instead  of  exer¬ 
cising  your  senses,  you  look  upwards  with  the  soul;  if, 
turning  away  the  eye  of  the  body,  you  open  the  eye  of  the 
mind,  thus  and  thus  only  will  you  be  able  to  see  God.”  He 
is  not  aware  that  this  reference  to  the  two  eyes,  the  eye  of 
the  body  and  the  eye  of  the  mind,  which  he  has  borrowed 
from  the  Greeks,  was  in  use  among  our  own  writers;  for 
Moses,  in  his  account  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  intro¬ 
duces  man  before  his  transgression  as  both  seeing  and  not 
seeing :  seeing,  when  it  is  said  of  the  woman,  “The  woman 
saw  that  the  tree  was  good  for  food,  and  that  it  was  pleasant 
to  the  eyes,  and  a  tree  to  be  desired  to  make  one  wise;”  and 
again  not  seeing,  as  when  he  introduces  the  serpent  saying 
to  the  woman,  as  if  she  and  her  husband  had  been  blind, 
“God  knows  that  on  the  day  that  ye  eat  thereof  your  eyes 
shall  be  opened;”  and  also  when  it  is  said,  “They  did  eat 
and  the  eyes  of  both  of  them  were  opened.”  The  eyes  of 
sense  were  then  opened,  which  they  had  done  well  to  keep 
shut,  that  they  might  not  be  distracted,  and  hindered  from 
seeing  with  the  eyes  of  the  mind;  and  it  was  those  eyes  of 
the  mind  which  in  consequence  of  sin,  as  I  imagine,  were 
then  closed,  with  which  they  had  up  to  that  time  enjoyed 
the  delight  of  beholding  God  and  His  paradise.  This  two¬ 
fold  kind  of  vision  in  us  was  familiar  to  our  Saviour,  who 
says,  “For  judgment  I  am  come  into  this  world,  that  they 


46 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


which  see  not,  might  see,  and  that  they  which  see  might 
be  made  blind,” — meaning,  by  the  eyes  that  see  not :  the 
eyes  of  the  mind,  which  are  enlightened  by  His  teaching; 
and  the  eyes  which  see  are  the  eyes  of  sense,  which  His 
words  do  render  blind,  in  order  that  the  soul  may  look 
without  distraction  upon  proper  objects.  All  true  Chris¬ 
tians  therefore  have  the  eye  of  the  mind  sharpened,  and 
the  eye  of  sense  closed;  so  that  each  one,  according  to  the 
degree  in  which  his  better  eye  is  quickened,  and  the  eye  of 
sense  darkened,  sees  and  knows  the  Supreme  God,  and  His 
Son,  who  is  the  Word,  Wisdom,  and  so  forth.  [Contra  Cel- 
sum,  VII,  39.] 

It  reappears  in  the  Theologia  Germanica. 

Now  the  created  soul  of  man  hath  also  two  eyes.  The  one 
is  the  power  of  seeing  into  eternity,  the  other  of  seeing  into 
time  and  the  creatures,  of  perceiving  how  they  differ  from 
each  other  as  aforesaid,  of  giving  life  and  needful  things 
to  the  body,  and  ordering  and  governing  it  for  the  best.  But 
these  two  eyes  of  the  soul  of  man  cannot  both  perform  their 
work  at  once;  but  if  the  soul  shall  see  with  the  right  eye 
into  eternity,  then  the  left  eye  must  close  itself  and  refrain 
from  working,  and  be  as  though  it  were  dead.  For  if  the 
left  eye  be  fulfilling  its  office  toward  outward  things ;  that  is, 
holding  converse  with  time  and  the  creatures ;  then  must 
the  right  eye  be  hindered  in  its  working;  that  is,  in  con¬ 
templation.  Therefore  whosoever  will  have  the  one  must 
let  the  other  go;  for  “no  man  can  serve  two  masters.”  [Ch. 
vii.  ] 

Something  like  it  occurs  in  Meister  Eckhart. 

Sant  Augustinus  sprichet  unde  mit  ime  ein  heidenischer 
meister  von  zwein  antliitzen  der  selen.  Daz  ein  ist  gekeret 
in  dise  welt  unde  zuo  dem  libe,  in  dem  wiirket  si  tugent  unde 


THE  TWO  EYES  OF  THE  SOUL 


47 


kunst.  Daz  ander  antliitze  ist  gekeret  gerihte  in  got,  in  dem 
ist  ane  underlaz  gotlich  lieht  unde  wiirket  da  inne  .  .  . 
[Pfeiffer,  iio,  21-25;  cf-  250,  31  ff-] 

The  organic  connection  between  these  two  aspects  or 
functions  of  the  soul  comes  out  in  Eckhart’s  repeated 
statements  that  God  does  not  destroy  ‘nature’  but  com¬ 
pletes  it.  [Wan  got  ist  niht  ein  zerstoerer  der  nature, 
mer;  er  vollebringet  si.  Pfeiffer,  18,  5  ff.  and  573,  3-5.] 1 

Passages  like  these  are  evidence  of  the  fact  that  the 
mystics  recognise  and  accept  the  necessity  for  the 
alternation  between  God  and  the  world,  between  con¬ 
templation  and  action.  They  accept  it  because  they  per¬ 
ceive  it,  more  or  less  clearly,  to  express  a  moral  require¬ 
ment.  One  ought  to  practise  the  presence  of  God  and 
one  ought  to  return  to  the  world  with  the  fruits  of  that 
experience,  and  these  two  processes  are  mutually 
auxiliary.  In  other  words,  the  alternation  might  be 
seen  to  be  necessary  independently  of  any  knowledge 
of  physiological  or  instinctive  rhythms. 

To  have  made  this  clear  is  the  chief  contribution  of 
Delacroix.  His  whole  treatment  of  the  mystical  life 
rests  upon  conceiving  it  not  merely  as  a  rhythm  but  as 
a  spiritual  dialectic .  Since,  however,  he  thinks  that  the 
proper  consummation  of  the  dialectic  is  a  state  in 
which  the  opposition  between  the  contemplative  and 
the  active  life  is  overcome,  he  regards  anything  short 
of  this  as  a  ‘mysticisme  fruste  et  intermittent.’  The 
alternation  is,  on  his  theory,  a  sign  of  instability. 

The  chief  difficulty  in  accepting  his  theory  is  that 

1  There  is  a  good  summary  of  Eckhart’s  teaching  on  this  point 
in  Delacroix,  Le  Mysticisme  speculatif  en  Allemagne,  p.  217,  n.  2. 


48 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


the  necessity  for  the  alternation  lies  deep  in  the  nature 
of  knowledge  and  of  morality,  and  indeed  pertains  to 
our  constitution  as  finite  beings.  Even  the  simplest  act 
of  perception  is  the  resultant  of  separate  acts  of  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  whole  and  to  the  parts  of  the  object.  In  mys¬ 
ticism  we  see  one  movement  in  that  adjustment  to  ex¬ 
perience  through  alternate  acts  of  attention  to  the 
many  and  the  one.  This  idea,  which  is  the  essential 
feature  of  Hocking’s  interpretation,  has  been  finely 
expressed  by  Havelock  Ellis. 

All  the  art  of  living  lies  in  a  fine  mingling  of  letting  go 
and  holding  in.  The  man  who  makes  the  one  or  the  other 
his  exclusive  aim  in  life  will  die  before  he  has  ever  begun  to 
live.  The  man  who  has  carried  one  part  of  the  process  to 
excess  before  turning  to  the  other  will  learn  indeed  what 
life  is,  and  may  leave  behind  him  the  memory  of  a  pattern 
saint.  But  he  alone  is  the  wise  master  of  living  who  from 
first  to  last  has  held  the  double  ideal  in  true  honour.  In 
these,  as  in  other  matters,  we  cannot  know  the  spiritual 
facts  unless  we  realise  the  physical  facts  of  life.  All  life  is 
a  building  up  and  a  breaking  down,  a  taking  in  and  a  giv¬ 
ing  out,  a  perpetually  anabolic  and  katabolic  rhythm.  To 
live  rightly  we  must  imitate  both  the  luxury  of  Nature  and 
her  austerity.2 

2  Affirmations,  p.  220. 


CHAPTER  III 


UNION  WITH  GOD 

IT  is  not  obvious  that  union  with  anything  is  a  su¬ 
preme  good.”  Yet  it  is  clear  that,  historically,  the 
idea  of  union  has  appealed  to  a  number  of  different 
human  needs.  If  there  is  a  common  element  among 
these  a  survey  of  the  more  important  of  them  may  re¬ 
veal  it. 

(i)  The  desire  to  get  rid  of  a  painful  type  of  self- 
consciousness  often  expresses  itself  as  a  desire  for  union 
with  some  reality  ‘outside  the  self.’  This  reality  may 
take  any  one  of  a  number  of  different  forms :  it  may  be 
the  Crowd,  or  The  National  Being,  or  Nature,  or  God. 
Union  offers  a  chance  to  forget  oneself.  Yet,  clearly, 
self-consciousness  is  not  in  itself  an  evil.  It  is  only 
when  self-consciousness  spells  awkwardness,  in  other 
words  when  it  forms  an  impediment  to  successful 
action,  that  it  clamours  to  be  removed.  Thus  the  desire 
for  union  begins  to  appear  as  the  desire  for  spontaneity 
or  facility  as  contrasted  with  effort.  The  motive  ap¬ 
pears  in  its  purity  in  Taoism.  Tao  is  “the  way  the  uni¬ 
verse  goes.”  It  goes,  so  to  speak,  by  not  trying  to  go. 
Like  the  Unmoved  Mover  of  Aristotelian  theology  it 
acts  by  being  and  not  by  doing.  Thus  Tao  may  be  said 
to  be  an  apotheosis  of  the  kind  of  power  that  comes 
from  relying  upon  one’s  being  and  not  upon  one’s 
effort;  union  with  Tao  means  the  tapping  of  this  kind 
of  energy. 


50 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


(2)  But  the  condemnation  of  self-consciousness  may 
be  more  immediate.  The  aesthetic  sense  may  reject  it 
because  it  is  ugly.  Self-consciousness  is  a  centrifugal 
force  in  human  affairs,  making  for  separatism  and  dis¬ 
cordance;  it  is  concomitant  with  breaking  time,  get¬ 
ting  out  of  step,  etc.,  and  these  things  offend  the  natu¬ 
ral  love  of  harmony.  The  philosophies  of  Greece  give 
us  the  classic  example  of  this  motive.  For  Plato  the 
political  bond  is  ultimately  indistinguishable  from  the 
aesthetic:  the  final  incentive  to  the  loyalty  of  the  in¬ 
dividual  citizen  is  the  maintenance  of  the  harmony  of 
the  ordered  political  community.  Individualism  nei¬ 
ther  looks  well  nor  feels  well. 

The  desire  for  power  easily  allies  itself  with  and 
runs  into  this  aesthetic  need.  In  the  feeling  of  satis¬ 
faction  that  comes,  for  example,  from  rowing  in  time 
with  the  seven  other  members  of  a  crew,  it  is  impossible 
to  say  how  much  of  the  enjoyment  is  to  be  traced  to 
the  pure  sense  of  harmony  and  how  much  to  the  feeling 
that  one  participates  in  the  one  life  and  movement  of 
the  boat.  Yet  in  principle  the  two  feelings  or  desires 
are  distinguishable. 

(3)  The  ambition  for  union  has  sometimes  taken  a 
more  abstract  form  than  either  of  the  above  and  one 
much  more  difficult  to  translate  into  terms  of  some 
other  ambition.  An  example  is  found  in  primitive 
Buddhism.  Buddhism  starts  from  the  doctrine  that 
reality  is  a  flux,  describable  not  in  terms  of  nouns  sub¬ 
stantive,  but  only  of  verbs.  The  self,  as  part  of  this 
flux,  is  merely  a  making  and  an  unmaking.  Therefore 
to  believe  in  the  existence  of  the  self  with  a  permanent 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


5i 

identity  of  its  own  and  to  act  on  that  belief  by  harbour¬ 
ing  desires  is,  as  it  were,  to  go  against  the  grain  of  the 
universe.  The  consequent  friction  makes  itself  felt  as 
suffering.  Nirvana  is  the  state  of  seeing  through  the 
illusion  of  selfhood  and  the  joy  of  being  ‘placed’  meta¬ 
physically.  We  seem  to  have  here  a  sort  of  ontological 
ambition.  It  is  hardly  accurate  to  say  that  the  Bud¬ 
dhist  desires  or  achieves  union  with  reality,  for  the 
achievement  consists  in  realising  that  there  never  was 
any  separation.  Yet  the  desire  for  union  is  there  in  a 
subtle  form.  Cancel  the  thought  of  the  illusion  that  has 
been  overcome  and  by  how  much  do  you  impoverish  the 
meaning  of  Nirvana?  Unless  the  memory  of  the  eight¬ 
fold  path  persists  in  the  final  experience  that  experi¬ 
ence  is  empty.  There  may  never  have  been  a  separate 
individual  self  which  has  now  been  restored  to  its  true 
place,  but  there  has  been  an  idea  of  separateness  which 
is  overcome  in  a  true  insight.  Salvation  is  not  the  moral 
union  at  a  moment  of  time  of  the  independent  in¬ 
dividual  with  an  independent  reality,  but  the  intel¬ 
lectual  discovery  that  this  independence  has  never 
existed.  The  adjustment  takes  place  altogether  within 
the  region  of  ideas.  In  other  words,  the  need  for  union 
is  still  present,  but  it  has  been  translated  into  logical 
terms. 

I  doubt  if  we  can  express  this  need  any  less  ab¬ 
stractly  than  by  calling  it  the  need  to  be  real.  Hocking 
has  suggested  that  Nirvana  “is  attractive  to  the  Bud¬ 
dhist  because  of  the  initiation  which  it  represents  into 
the  very  moving  principles  of  the  cosmos;  the  love  of 
power  has  not  disappeared  into  something  else,  but  has 


52 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


taken  the  form  of  an  aspiration  for  metaphysical  status 
with  all  the  power  over  one’s  own  destiny  and  over 
other  men’s  minds  there  implied.”1  This  aspiration  is 
there,  as  it  must  be ;  but  it  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  so 
important  a  factor  as  the  need  to  be  real — without 
qualification.  If,  for  example,  we  compare  Buddhism 
with  Christianity  in  this  respect  it  is  evident  that  the 
conscious  ambition  for  power  plays  a  much  greater 
part  in  Christianity.  The  Founder  of  Christianity,  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  eschatologists,  was  seeking  to  bend  the 
processes  of  history  to  his  own  purpose;  the  God  of 
Christianity  is  a  God  who  enters  into  the  world  as  a 
competing  power ;  Christianity  is  a  missionary  religion 
and  union  with  the  Christian  God  meant  union  with  a 
Being  who  was  to  overcome  the  world.  We  know  next 
to  nothing  about  that  Reality  with  which  the  Buddhist 
found  himself  allied,  because  Buddhism  definitely 
shunned  such  speculations,  but  certainly  no  such  posi¬ 
tive  purpose  was  attributed  to  it.  Buddhism  on  the 
whole  was  quietistic,  defining  its  good  in  terms  of  being 
and  resting.  Buddha  himself  could  find  no  convincing 
reason  for  preaching  the  dharma  and,  as  Hoeffding 
acutely  observes,  the  real  character  of  Buddhism  is  re¬ 
vealed  by  the  fact  that  what  Buddha  founded  was  not 
a  church  but  an  order  of  monks. 

(4)  What  we  have  so  far  distinguished  as  the  desire 
for  power  and  the  desire  to  be  real  appear  in  interesting 
union  in  the  system  of  Spinoza.  The  love  of  God  which 
drives  out  all  other  passions  is,  for  Spinoza,  admittedly 

1  W.  E.  Hocking,  Human  Nature  and  Its  Remaking,  p.  334. 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


53 


a  love  of  power,  though  not,  of  course,  of  power  in  any 
competitive  sense.  But  this  love  of  God  is  an  intel¬ 
lectual  love,  that  is,  it  is  the  same  thing  as  the  desire 
to  discover  what,  sub  specie  eternitatis,  one  truly  is — 
an  organ  of  the  divine  reality.  The  will  to  be  fully  real 
is  the  same  as  the  will  to  power  because  real  existence 
is  itself  a  form  of  power.  Anything  is  independently 
real  to  the  extent  to  which  that  force  by  which  it  main¬ 
tains  itself  in  existence  is  self-derived.  Until  my  ac¬ 
tions  can  be  explained  by  reference  to  myself  alone  the 
actions  are  not  mine  but,  in  part,  the  actions  of  external 
things  upon  me.  Therefore  until  I  can  discover  my 
real  self  and  be  determined  in  my  conduct  by  that,  I 
am  relatively  impotent.  But  what  am  I  really?  A 
necessary  function  of  the  Absolute,  answers  Spinoza. 
Thus  my  power  and  my  reality  are  the  same  thing  and 
both  of  them  turn  out  to  be  derivative. 

In  the  demand,  then,  for  union  with  God  or  with 
some  ‘larger’  reality  we  may  detect  these  two  strands 
of  ambition:  the  desire  to  be  real  and  the  desire  for 
power.  Let  us  consider  the  first  of  these. 

The  desire  to  be  real !  That,  I  admit,  is  not,  in  spite 
of  our  attempts  to  elucidate  it,  a  very  promising 
formula  for  the  mystical  ambition.  It  is  far  too  nebu¬ 
lous.  Yet  in  the  search  for  more  clarity  and  precision 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  there  are  necessary  limits 
to  what  we  may  hope  to  achieve.  We  can  never  clear 
our  renderings  of  these  ultimate  concepts  from  vague¬ 
ness  and  impressionism.  Anything  that  could  be  de¬ 
fined  as  the  highest  good  would  not  be  the  highest 
good. 


54 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


It  is  not  difficult  to  discern  the  reasons  for  this  para¬ 
dox.  The  will  can  only  be  commanded  by  some  ideal 
which  possesses  it,  which  therefore  it  does  not  wholly 
possess.  My  will — that  by  which  I  am  moved — is  my 
idea  making  itself  known  to  me,  gradually  assuming 
the  definite  outline  of  idea.  Since  it  is  the  need  for 
definiteness  that  urges  me  on — the  need  for  reaching  a 
point  where  I  can  say :  There,  that  is  what  I  wanted ! — 
the  condition  of  advance  is  that  my  object  should  not 
be  completely  known.  It  is  because  I  cannot  declare 
what  I  want  that  I  continue  to  want  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  a  fact  of  familiar  observation  that  once 
an  idea  has  become  definite  it  loses  some  of  its  hold 
upon  us.  Every  attainment  is  accompanied  by  a  feeling 
of  disappointment:  the  curtain  comes  down  upon  the 
climax:  life  has  temporarily  ceased  to  be  dramatic. 
The  moment  when  an  ideal  becomes  an  idea  is  a  mo¬ 
ment  of  birth,  but  like  every  birth  it  brings  with  it  a 
feeling  of  loss.  That  which  was  part  of  me  has  entered 
the  world  of  objects,  now  belongs  to  the  ‘not-self,’  has 
its  name  and  status  there,  and  will  never  again  have 
the  same  power  over  me.  Thus  there  is  wisdom  in  the 
natural  human  shrinking  from  any  answer  to  ultimate 
questions  which  smacks  of  finality.  We  know  intui¬ 
tively  that  any  scheme  which  too  nicely  prescribes  our 
destiny  will  have  missed  the  essence  of  the  matter.2 

2  In  Shaw’s  play,  Androcles  and  the  Lion,  the  Roman  Captain 
urges  the  Christian,  Lavinia,  to  burn  the  incense.  He  says  to  her: 
“What  you  are  facing  is  certain  death.  You  have  nothing  left  now 
but  your  faith  in  this  craze  of  yours:  this  Christianity.  Are  your 
Christian  fairy  stories  any  truer  than  our  stories  about  Jupiter  and 
Diana  .  .  .  ?  Lav.  ...  A  man  cannot  die  for  a  story  and  a  dream. 


UNION  WITH  GOD  55 

But  while  these  considerations  should  lead  us  not 
to  expect  too  much  definiteness  either  from  the  mystics 
or  their  interpreters  they  do  not  constitute  a  justifica¬ 
tion  in  advance  for  any  particular  degree  of  indefinite¬ 
ness.  We  must  try  to  get  more  light. 

Men  take  most  things  for  granted — their  health, 
their  friendships,  their  temperament,  their  happiness. 
Apart  from  some  misfortune  or  catastrophe  which  may 
suddenly  reveal  that  all  these  things  are  accidents  and 
that  the  world  does  not  owe  them  their  well-faring, 
they  do  not  enquire  too  closely  into  the  validity  of  their 
claims  upon  Fortune.  They  take  things  as  they  come 
and  are  not  troubled  by  scruples.  And  their  confidence 
extends  to  the  future  as  well  as  to  the  present.  If  they 
are  not  now  concerned  to  know  about  the  sinister  aspect 
which  the  world  presents  to  others  not  so  happily  situ¬ 
ated  as  themselves,  neither  are  they  concerned  to  antici¬ 
pate  the  future  complexion  of  things.  “Why  borrow 
trouble?”  “Sufficient  unto  the  day  ...”  “We  will 
cross  that  bridge  when  we  come  to  it.”  Perhaps  the 
thing  we  dread  will  not  come  to  pass,  or,  if  it  does, 

None  of  us  believed  the  stories  and  the  dreams  more  devoutly  than 
poor  Spintho;  but  he  could  not  face  the  great  reality.  What  he 
would  have  called  my  faith  has  been  oozing  away  minute  by  minute 
whilst  IVe  been  sitting  here,  with  reality  becoming  reader  and 
reader,  with  stories  and  dreams  fading  away  into  nothing.  Capt. 
Are  you  then  going  to  die  for  nothing?  Lav.  Yes:  that  is  the  won¬ 
derful  thing.  It  is  since  all  the  stories  and  dreams  have  gone  that  I 
have  now  no  doubt  at  all  that  I  must  die  for  something  greater 
than  dreams  or  stories.  Capt.  But  for  what?  Lav.  I  don’t  know.  If 
it  were  for  anything  small  enough  to  know,  it  would  be  too  small 
to  die  for.  I  think  I’m  going  to  die  for  God.  Nothing  else  is  real 
enough  to  die  for.  Capt.  What  is  God?  Lav.  When  we  know  that, 
Captain,  we  shall  be  Gods  ourselves.” 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


56 

either  we  shall  find  that  the  reality  is  not  so  bad  as  the 
anticipation  or  the  emergency  will  arouse  in  us  ener¬ 
gies  sufficient  to  deal  with  it. 

To  a  great  extent  this  attitude  is  necessary  in  the 
normal  economy  of  living.  We  cannot  afford  to  justify 
each  step  in  advance.  It  is  with  life  as  with  learning  to 
swim:  we  must  first  make  the  experiment  before  dis¬ 
covering  that  the  water  will  support  us — and  life  is  a 
continual  experiment.  Too  much  reflection  produces 
a  disease  of  its  own:  to  know  all  might  engender  a 
pessimism  that  would  paralyse  movement.  “Ye  shall 
know  the  truth- — and  the  truth  will  make  you  mad.” 

Yet  much  of  this  attitude  we  should  recognise  for 
what  it  is— a  wilful  ignoring  of  the  ugly  and  the  dan¬ 
gerous,  a  living  in  a  Fools’  Paradise,  a  crying  of  peace 
where  there  is  not  and  ought  not  to  be  peace. 

Now  the  refusal  to  take  life  on  such  easy  terms  is  a 
characteristic  mark  of  the  mystic  temperament.  Mys¬ 
tics  are  scrupulous, — to  the  workaday  judgment,  over- 
scrupulous.  They  will  own  nothing  of  this  world’s 
goods  unless  they  can  own  them  by  right.  They  must 
look  into  the  titles  to  all  property.  Hence  they  are  pre¬ 
cariously  attached  to  homely  earth.  It  needs  but  a 
touch  to  set  them  off  upon  some  radical  enterprise. 
They  are  ascetics,  in  the  sense  that  the  ascetic  is  one 
who  wants  to  know  and  suffer  the  worst  in  order  to  try 
if  by  any  chance  he  may  be  man  enough  to  meet  it.  In 
short  they  have  a  passionate  need  to  know  once  for  all 
where  and  how  they  stand  in  this  universe.  They  will 
come  to  terms  with  destiny  or  be  broken  in  the  attempt. 
And  this  is  what  I  mean  by  the  desire  to  be  real. 


UNION  WITH  GOD  57 

The  ambition  remains  the  same  under  diverse  forms. 
If  Reality  is  flux  and  the  self  a  weaving  and  unweav¬ 
ing  of  skandhas ,  then  it  is  blessedness  to  win  this  in¬ 
sight,  to  know  that  the  last  illusion  has  been  destroyed. 
Here  is  initiation,  here  the  end  of  rebirth  and  suffer¬ 
ing.  Here  the  flux  meets  no  resistance.  If  we  think  in 
terms  of  God  rather  than  of  the  flux,  then  finding  God 
means  finding  one's  most  real  Object  and  this  in  turn 
means  finding  one’s  real  self.  In  this  Presence  there 
can  be  no  reservations :  one  is  thrown  back  upon  one’s 
ultimate  substance.  And  this  is  the  beginning  of  the 
individual’s  freedom,  for  however  further  God  is  to 
be  defined  He  is  at  least  the  God  of  the  whole  universe, 
He  is  the  point  from  which  reality  can  be  dealt  with  in 
its  totality.  Union  with  such  a  being  would  mean  the 
ability  to  confront  the  universe  as  He  may  be  supposed 
to  confront  it,  not  denying  but  mastering  the  evil  there. 
Henceforth,  through  all  vicissitudes  of  good  and  evil 
fortune,  one  would  know  where  one  stood . 

The  second  element  in  the  meaning  of  union  with 
God  we  called  the  desire  for  power.  The  power  in  ques¬ 
tion  is  a  peculiar  power,  not  at  all  comparable  to  that 
which  might  be  conferred  by  reliance  upon  a  God  who 
is  worker  of  miracles  or  supernatural  substitute  for 
human  labour.  But  before  we  can  justify  this  statement 
we  must  first  analyse  the  meaning  of  the  mystic’s  pas¬ 
sivity.  This  will  form  the  topic  of  the  chapter  which 
follows. 


CHAPTER  IV 


PASSIVITY  AND  ITS  MEANING 

IT  is  obvious  that  any  attempt  to  deny  the  will  in  all 
special  forms,  such  as  the  mystic  frankly  under¬ 
takes,  has  its  dangers.  The  abandonment  of  effort 
thereby  involved  will  of  itself  afford  a  kind  of  relief 
and  bring  with  it  positive  enjoyments  whose  seductive¬ 
ness  is  potent. 

How  sweet  it  were,  hearing  the  downward  stream, 
With  half-shut  eyes  ever  to  seem 
Falling  asleep  in  a  half-dream! 

The  lotus  will  never  lose  its  enchantment — and  the 
lotus  grows  near  to  the  true  paradise.  The  mystics  in 
their  journey  skirt  the  edge  of  that  sleepy  land  and 
many  have  wandered  into  it.  But  they  have  been  quite 
aware  of  the  danger.  They  have  been  quick  to  reject 
quietism  as  a  false  doctrine.  Here,  for  example,  is  a 
typical  statement  by  Fenelon  upon  this  subject. 

C’est  une  volonte  positive  et  formelle  qui  nous  fait  vouloir 
ou  desirer  reellement  toute  volonte  de  Dieu  qui  nous  est 
connue.  Ce  n’est  point  une  indolence  stupide,  une  inaction 
interieure,  une  non-volonte,  une  suspension  generale,  un 
equilibre  perpetuel  de  Fame.  [Maximes  des  Saints,  art. 
xxiv.] 

And  this  is  from  the  man  of  whose  religion  Emile 
Faguet  has  written,  “Etre  uni,  uni  a  Dieu,  et  uni  en 
Dieu,  n’avoir  d’autre  volonte  que  la  sienne  et  vouloir 
qu’il  veuille  pour  nous,  s’absorber,  se  dissoudre,  etre 


6o 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


un  torrent  qui  glisse  en  lui  et  s’y  abandonne:  voila 
T extreme,  je  dis  l’extreme,  mais  voila  bien  le  terme 
ou  tend  sans  cesse  la  pensee  religieuse  de  Fenelon.”1 

We  are  taken  a  little  nearer  to  the  reason  for  such 
disclaimers  by  a  mystic  who  in  his  own  time  and 
country  had  to  deal  with  similar  perversions  of  mysti¬ 
cal  practice.  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  in  enumerating  five 
sins  against  which  beginners  in  the  spiritual  life  are 
warned,  lays  stress  on  what  he  calls  spiritual  “volup¬ 
tuousness”  and  “gluttony.”  He  means  by  this  to  con¬ 
demn  all  search  for  a  merely  passive  type  of  enjoyment. 
It  is  to  just  such  a  failure  in  the  purity  of  the  moral 
intention  that  he  attributes  the  horrors  of  the  Dark 
Night  of  the  Soul. 

But  for  the  most  acute  discrimination  between  the 
‘true’  and  the  ‘false’  passivity  we  must  turn  to  Ruys- 
broeck.  The  passage  which  follows  I  have  quoted  in 
full  partly  because  of  its  analytical  power,  partly  be¬ 
cause  it  shows  quite  clearly  that  the  distinction  is  not 
prompted  by  a  mere  desire  for  orthodoxy  but  is  the 
report  of  one  who  knows  whereof  he  speaks. 

Every  man  who  is  not  drawn  and  enlightened  of  God 
is  not  touched  by  love,  and  has  neither  the  active  cleaving 
with  desire  nor  the  simple  and  loving  tendency  to  fruitive 
rest.  And  therefore  such  a  one  cannot  unite  himself  with 
God;  for  all  those  who  live  without  supernatural  love  are 
inclined  towards  themselves  and  seek  their  rest  in  outward 
things.  For  all  creatures  by  their  nature  tend  towards  rest: 
and  therefore  rest  is  sought  both  by  the  good  and  the  evil 
in  divers  ways. 

1  Dix-Septieme  Siecle,  Etudes  Litteraires,  p.  347. 


PASSIVITY  AND  ITS  MEANING 


61 


Now  mark  this :  when  a  man  is  bare  and  imageless  in  his 
senses,  and  empty  and  idle  in  his  higher  powers,  he  enters 
into  rest  through  mere  nature ;  and  this  rest  may  be  found 
and  possessed  within  themselves  in  mere  nature  by  all  crea¬ 
tures,  without  the  grace  of  God,  whenever  they  can  strip 
themselves  of  images  and  of  all  activity.  But  in  this  the 
loving  man  cannot  find  his  rest,  for  charity  and  the  inward 
touch  of  God’s  grace  will  not  be  still :  and  so  the  inward  man 
cannot  long  remain  in  natural  rest  within  himself. 

But  now  mark  the  way  in  which  this  natural  rest  is  prac¬ 
tised.  It  is  a  sitting  still  without  either  outward  or  inward 
acts,  in  vacancy,  in  order  that  rest  may  be  found  and  may 
be  untroubled.  But  a  rest  which  is  practised  in  this  way  is 
unlawful;  for  it  brings  with  it  in  men  a  blindness  and 
ignorance,  and  a  sinking  down  into  themselves  without 
activity.  Such  a  rest  is  naught  else  than  idleness,  into  which 
the  man  has  fallen  and  in  which  he  forgets  himself  and  God 
and  all  things  in  all  that  has  to  do  with  activity.  This  rest  is 
wholly  contrary  to  the  supernatural  rest  which  one  possesses 
in  God ;  for  that  is  a  loving  self-mergence  joined  to  a  simple 
gazing  into  the  Incomprehensible  Brightness.  This  rest  in 
God,  which  is  actively  sought  with  inward  longing,  and  is 
found  in  fruitive  inclination,  and  is  eternally  possessed  in 
the  self-mergence  of  love,  and  which,  when  possessed,  is 
sought  none  the  less :  this  rest  is  exalted  above  the  rest  of 
mere  nature  as  greatly  as  God  is  exalted  above  all  crea¬ 
tures.  .  .  . 

In  this  bare  vacancy  the  rest  is  pleasant  and  great.  This 
rest  is  in  itself  no  sin;  for  it  exists  in  all  men  by  nature, 
whenever  they  make  themselves  empty.  But  when  a  man 
wishes  to  practise  and  possess  it  without  acts  of  virtue,  he 
falls  into  spiritual  pride  and  a  self-complacency,  from  which 


62 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


he  seldom  recovers.  [. Adornment  of  the  Spiritual  Marriage , 
Book  II,  ch.  Ivi,  trans.  by  C.  A.  Wynschenk  Dom.] 

Ruysbroeck  here  distinguishes  two  marks  of  the 
‘true’  passivity:  first,  it  is  ‘actively  sought/  that  is,  a 
certain  effort  is  necessary  to  maintain  it.  Second,  it 
differs  from  any  natural  or  automatic  type  of  relief  by 
the  moral  preparation  which  precedes  it.  The  negation 
of  the  will  is  a  negation  of  self- will.  Leaving  the  con¬ 
sideration  of  this  point  until  later  let  us  turn  to  the 
first. 

This  enforced  waiting,  this  self-imposed  receptivity, 
which  is  the  defining  mark  of  the  stage  of  contempla¬ 
tion,  is  not  the  end  of  the  mystic’s  career.  It  is  the  end 
of  his  efforts,  in  the  sense  that  he  can  do  no  more,  but  it 
is  destined  to  give  way  to  the  stage  of  ecstasy  when 
matters  are  taken  out  of  the  hand  of  the  individual 
and  he  becomes  the  vehicle  of  a  power  greater  than 
himself.  “Remain  steadfastly  in  thyself  until  thou  art 
drawn  out  of  thyself  without  any  act  of  thine.” 

Even  if  the  mystics  themselves  had  not  underlined 
this  distinction  between  the  two  periods  in  their  ex¬ 
perience  this  preparatory  aspect  of  passivity  would  be 
clear  from  the  images  they  have  employed  to  describe 
it:  one  is  in  the  house  of  the  Master  and  is  waiting  for 
the  Master  to  appear,  or  one  waits  for  the  sign  from 
the  choragus  to  begin  the  dance,  or  the  mirror  of  the 
soul  is  to  be  polished  so  that  it  may  reflect  the  divine 
light,  or  the  window  of  the  soul  is  to  be  made  clean 
so  that  it  may  allow  the  divine  rays  to  pass  through, 
or  the  soul  is  to  become  ‘souple  a  l’impulsion  divine/ 
What  these  metaphors  are  describing  is  a  state  of 


PASSIVITY  AND  ITS  MEANING 


63 

breathless  attention,  a  hard-earned  and  hard-held 
waiting  for  the  divine  revelation  and  the  divine  onset. 

With  the  observation  that  the  mystic’s  passivity  is 
preparatory  we  begin  to  see  the  limits  which  he  sets 
to  the  final  efficacy  of  his  preparation.  He  knows  that 
it  contains  no  infallible  prescription  for  making  God 
appear.  No  matter  how  rigorous  the  moral  discipline 
may  have  been  he  makes  no  claim  to  be  able  to  ‘force 
the  hand  of  God.’  Like  the  poet  he  knows  that 

Vision  will  mate  him  not  by  law  and  vow. 

The  achievement  is  never  wholly  earned;  as  in  the 
mystic  there  remains  a  saving  measure  of  humility,  so 
in  the  revelation  there  is  a  touch,  if  not  of  mystery,  at 
least  of  divine  generosity.  “And  to  it  none  can  attain 
through  knowledge  and  subtlety,  neither  through  any 
exercise  whatever.  Only  he  with  whom  it  pleases  God 
to  be  united  in  His  Spirit,  and  whom  it  pleases  Him 
to  enlighten  by  Himself,  can  see  God,  and  no  one 
else.”2 

But  if  the  moral  preparation  is  not  a  sufficient,  it  is 
still  a  necessary,  condition  of  salvation.  Without  pu¬ 
rity  of  heart  there  is  no  seeing  of  God.  And  this  is  what 
Ruysbroeck  has  in  mind  in  distinguishing  the  true 
from  the  false  rest.  The  latter  is  mere  idleness,  to  be 
won  by  any  means ;  it  is  certainly  not  controlled  by  any 
disinterested  love  of  God.  It  is  the  sleep  which  follows 
on  spiritual  lotus-eating,  a  sleep  and  a  re-creation 
which  is  not  even  partly  earned.  Even  if  it  results  in 
an  enhancement  of  power  the  connection  between  that 

2  Ruysbroeck,  op.  cit.,  Book  III,  ch.  i. 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


64 

increment  and  what  has  gone  before  will  remain  a  pre¬ 
carious  bond.3 

Granted  that  the  mystic  is  waiting  for  the  revelation 
of  God,  the  question  then  arises,  What  does  he  look  to 
God  to  do  for  him?  One  thing  is  clear:  he  does  not 
expect  God  to  accomplish  any  particular  thing :  God’s 
grace  is  not  a  substitute  for  the  work  required  of  the 
individual  in  solving  any  practical  or  intellectual 
problem.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  invariable  injunc¬ 
tion  to  suppress  all  special  desires,  such  as  appears  in 
the  following  quotations. 

He  .  .  .  must  be  unencumbered,  and  as  empty  of  every 
outward  work  as  if  he  did  not  work  at  all :  for  if  his  empti¬ 
ness  is  troubled  within  by  some  work  of  virtue,  he  has  an 
image;  and  as  long  as  this  endures  within  him,  he  cannot 
contemplate.  [Ruysbroeck,  op.  cit.,  Book  III,  ch.  i.] 

Und  wenn  man  das  gewahr  wird,  dass  der  Herr  da  ist, 
so  soli  man  das  ganze  Werk  Gott  befohlen  seyn  lassen,  und 
dem  Herrn  sich  ganz  hingehen;  ja,  alle  Krafte  sollen  ihm 
schweigen.  Denn  alle  Gedanken  und  Werke  des  Menschen 
hindern  Gott.  Deswegen  soil  der  Mensch  nichts  anderes 
thun,  als  dass  er  Gott  leide.  [Tauler,  Pred.  Ill,  p.  28.  Am 
Tage  der  Geburt  Maria.\ 

For  after  such  a  fashion  doth  God  place  the  soul  in  this 

3  Even  among  the  Christian  mystics  there  are  some  to  whom 
the  above  statements  do  not  apply,  e.g.,  Meister  Eckhart.  There 
seems  to  be  no  place  in  his  system  for  anything  like  “grace.”  He 
often  speaks  as  though  the  conclusion  of  the  mystic’s  preparation 
and  union  with  God  were  one  and  the  same  thing.  This  position 
was  inevitable  if  Eckhart  really  meant  to  assert  the  identity  of  'the 
ground  of  the  soul’  and  God,  for  in  that  event  the  final  mystic 
attainment  can  only  be  the  discovery  of  this  identity.  Delacroix,  Le 
Mysticisme  Speculatif  en  Allemagne  au  Quatorzieme  Siecle,  p.  211, 
note,  and  p.  215,  note,  has  some  valuable  remarks  on  this  point. 


PASSIVITY  AND  ITS  MEANING 


65 


state  and  by  so  different  a  road  doth  He  lead  her,  that  if 
she  is  fain  to  take  action  of  herself  and  make  use  of  her  own 
powers,  rather  doth  she  hinder  than  assist  the  operation  that 
God  is  working  in  her.  [St.  John  of  the  Cross,  The  Dark 
Night  of  the  Soul ,  trans.  Cunninghame  Graham,  p.  75.] 

A  good  intention  often  impedes  true  union.  [Suso,  Life, 
trans.  by  T.  F.  Knox,  p.  218.] 

Establish  thyself  in  absolute  detachment;  for  an  un¬ 
bounded  longing,  even  for  what  is  divine,  when  it  is  ex¬ 
cessive,  may  become  a  secret  obstacle.  [ lb p.  222.] 

It  is  obvious  that  these  writers  are  guarding  against 
the  danger  of  taking  God  as  a  worker  of  miracles. 
Mystical  practice  is  not  a  business  of  looking  up  the 
answers  at  the  end  of  the  book  of  life,  nor  is  union  with 
God  a  short  cut  to  either  knowledge  or  virtue.  It  was 
just  because  such  groups  as  The  Brethren  of  the  Free 
Spirit  in  the  fourteenth  century  insisted  on  taking 
their  religious  life  as  a  sort  of  “divine  somnambulism” 
and  regarded  the  will  of  God  as  wholly  displacing  the 
human  will  that  they  met  with  violent  opposition  from 
the  exponents  of  a  saner  discipline. 

But  a  paradox  still  remains.  If  God  is  not  a  substi¬ 
tute  for  individual  effort,  if  some  differential  activity 
is  still  to  persist,  how  is  that  compatible  with  the  ap¬ 
parent  rejection  of  all  effort? 

The  paradox  is  only  superficial.  We  know  what  it 
is  to  lose  faith  in  the  value  of  our  work:  the  tide  of 
enthusiasm  which  floated  us  on  has  ebbed :  inspiration 
has  given  place  to  drudgery.  When  we  come  to  such 
a  pass  there  is  no  use  in  reminding  ourselves  of  the 
abstract  theoretical  truth  that  our  work  has  value.  A 


66 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


creed  is  no  substitute  for  a  conviction,  nor  will  it  profit 
us  to  recall  the  hours  when  our  faith  was  vigorous.  All 
such  deliberate  effort  only  intensifies  the  hopelessness 
with  which  we  stare  into  our  task.  That  method  we 
must  abandon,  and  if  we  are  to  recapture  our  ardour 
it  must  be  by  coming  into  the  presence  of  some  equiva¬ 
lent  enthusiasm :  we  must  kindle  our  torch  at  the  flame 
of  another’s  faith.  Again,  we  know  the  futility  of  try¬ 
ing  to  ‘look  on  the  bright  side  of  things.’  What  is  the 
good  of  my  reassuring  myself  that  God  is  in  Heaven 
when  as  a  fact  I  cannot  see  Him?  Such  damned  itera¬ 
tion  will  raise  a  din  but  never  kindle  a  spark.  For  that 
I  must  seek  out  some  believer  whose  faith  is  visibly  at 
work  and  who  accepts  the  worth  of  human  tasks  with¬ 
out  question  or  reserve.  I  trust  his  judgment  to  com¬ 
municate  itself  to  me  as  an  empirical  revelation  of 
value.  Whenever  I  seek  such  solution  of  my  difficulties 
I  am  not  asking  that  other  individual  to  do  my  work 
for  me — I  am  looking  for  the  revaluation  of  that  effort 
with  which  I  work.  I  n  short  what  I  am  in  search  of  is 
not  information  but  inspiration.  But  what  we  have  here 
been  describing  is  in  principle  the  mystic’s  predica¬ 
ment  and  its  solution.  His  rejection  of  the  world  is  a 
confession  that  he  has  lost  faith  in  the  value  of  every¬ 
thing:  nothing  is  good  enough  for  him,  nothing  absorbs 
him.  From  this  frustration  his  own  efforts  cannot  de¬ 
liver  him:  he  must  recover  his  sense  of  worth  in  the 

world’s  work  bv  some  immediate  contact  with  the 

* 

Being  whose  interest  in  this  world  presumably  con¬ 
stitutes  its  divinity.4 

4  I  return  to  the  consideration  of  this  problem  in  chapter  x. 


PART  II 
REVELATION 


I 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


THAT  the  mystic  claims  to  have  received  knowl¬ 
edge  in  the  ecstatic  experience  is  not  disputed  by 
any  student  of  the  subject.  For  the  mystic  himself  the 
experience  is  never  merely  emotional  or  subjective — it 
is  a  revelation  of  Truth.  Even  when  they  have  been  un¬ 
able  to  understand  how  knowledge  could  have  befallen 
them,  since  they  seem  to  have  annihilated  the  very 
conditions  in  which  knowledge  is  possible,  they  have 
not  abandoned  their  original  certainty.  They  have 
either  given  up  the  attempt  to  explain  it  or,  more  fre¬ 
quently,  have  postulated  some  special  organ  of  knowl¬ 
edge  for  the  perception  of  supernatural  truth.  For  an 
example  of  the  first  procedure  we  may  take  the  follow¬ 
ing  from  Teresa.  She  is  speaking  of  ‘ravissement.’ 
“Ceci  n’est  pas  comme  un  evanouissement  ou  Ton  est 
prive  de  tout  connaissance.  .  .  .  Ce  que  je  sais,  moi, 
des  ames  ainsi  ravies,  c’est  que  jamais  elles  ne  furent 
plus  eveillees  aux  choses  de  Dieu,  ni  plus  eclairees  sur 
son  excellence  souveraine.”  She  points  out  the  difficulty 
of  seeing  how,  when  all  the  avenues  of  sense  have  been 
closed  and  the  operations  of  the  discursive  reason  sus¬ 
pended,  there  can  be  any  knowledge.  And  she  goes  on, 
“Je  n’en  sais  rien,  vous  repondrai-je,  et  peut-etre  per- 
sonne  n’en  sait-il  plus  que  moi.”1  The  following  illus¬ 
trates  the  appeal  to  a  special  organ  of  religious  knowl- 

1  Chat.  Int.  Oeuvres,  ed.  Bouix,  vol.  Ill,  pp.  391-192. 


70 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


edge.  “In  this  supernatural  manner  the  soul  knows 
God  in  the  depths  of  her  being,  and  she  sees  Him,  so  to 
say,  more  clearly  than  she  sees  the  material  light  with 
the  eyes  of  the  body.  .  .  .  Neither  the  senses,  nor  the 
imagination,  have  the  least  part  in  this  vision ;  all  takes 
place  in  the  summit  of  the  spirit.”2 

The  object  of  this  chapter  is  not  to  test  the  claim  but 
to  analyse  it  in  order  to  discover  what  is  involved  in  it. 

Revelation!  Neither  the  word  nor  the  thing  is  in 
good  standing  among  us  today.  It  smacks  of  magic. 
There  is  something  repugnant  in  the  idea  of  knowledge 
to  be  gained  by  ways  other  than  those  accredited  in 
science  and  philosophy,  by  short  cuts  and  back-door 
methods.  We  will  give  the  name  of  knowledge  only  to 
that  which  we  have  gained  by  intelligible  means,  to 
which,  therefore,  we  are  so  far  entitled.  Moreover,  reve¬ 
lation  suggests  a  private  and  peculiar  wisdom  and, 
consequently,  a  privileged  class  of  initiates, — recipi¬ 
ents  and  guardians  of  the  revelation.  But  we  have  come 
to  believe  that  there  cannot  be  a  monopoly  of  truth  or 
of  any  part  of  it  any  more  than  there  can  be  a  monopoly 
of  culture.  In  short,  it  is  the  esoteric  in  mysticism  that 
makes  us  almost  unwilling  even  to  give  a  hearing  to 
its  claims. 

But  let  us  first  make  clear  what  those  claims  are. 
And  here  it  will  be  well  to  have  before  us  a  few  typical 
mystical  utterances,  less  to  serve  as  evidence  than  to 
remind  us  of  a  general  flavour. 

And  I  saw  and  knew  the  whole  working  essence,  in  the 

2  Alvarez  de  Paz,  Works,  vol.  Ill,  Book  V,  ch.  xiv.  Quoted  by 
Poulain,  The  Graces  of  Interior  Prayer,  ch.  xviii. 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


7 1 


evil  and  in  the  good,  and  the  mutual  origin  and  existence; 
and  likewise  how  the  fruitful  bearing  womb  of  eternity 
brought  forth.  .  .  .  For  I  had  a  thorough  view  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  as  in  a  chaos,  wherein  all  things  are  couched  and 
wrapped  up,  but  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  explicate  the 
same.  [Quoted  from  Boehme  by  James,  Varieties  of  Reli¬ 
gious  Experience ,  p.  41 1.] 

Etant  un  jour  en  oraison,  il  me  fut  en  un  instant  rep¬ 
resente  de  quelle  maniere  toutes  les  choses  se  voient  et  sont 
contenues  en  Dieu.  Je  ne  les  apercevais  pas  sous  leurs  pro- 
pres  formes,  et  neansmoins  la  vue  que  j’en  avals  etait  d’une 
entiere  clarte :  tenter  de  la  decrire  serait  impossible. 
[Teresa,  Life ,  ch.  xl;  Bouix,  vol.  I,  pp.  524-525.] 

Here  it  was  as  a  flash  of  lightning,  or  as  though  a  curtain 
were  drawn  aside  to  allow  of  a  momentary  sight  of  some 
wonderful  treasures  and  were  then  suddenly  replaced.  God 
thus  showed  me  the  infinite  immensity  and  incomprehen¬ 
sibility  of  His  Being,  but  my  small  capacity  could  not  bear 
all  that  it  saw  in  that  instant  of  time.  ...  No  language 
can  describe  the  secret  marvels  that  are  there  wrought  be¬ 
tween  God  and  the  soul,  or  the  grandeur  of  God  which  is 
there  manifested.  [Ven.  Marina  de  Escobar.  Life,  vol.  I, 
Book  III,  ch.  i.  Quoted  by  Poulain,  Graces  of  Interior 
Prayer,  ch.  xviii.] 

The  sublimest  wealth  of  the  spirit  in  its  own  proper  form 
consists  in  this :  that  being  now  freed  from  the  weight  of 
sin,  it  soars  upwards  in  the  might  of  God  into  its  divinely 
illuminated  reason,  where  it  enjoys  a  perpetual  flux  of 
heavenly  consolations.  It  can  now  behold  the  secret  rela¬ 
tions  of  things.  [Suso,  Life,  ch.  liii.] 

And  the  moment  such  a  soul  places  itself  in  the  presence 
of  God  it  makes  an  act  of  knowledge  confused,  loving, 
peaceful  and  tranquil  wherein  it  drinks  in  wisdom,  love  and 


72 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


sweetness.  [St.  John  of  the  Cross,  Ascent  of  Mount  Carmel, 
Book  II,  ch.  xiv.] 

But  when  the  soul  doth  feel  the  presence  of  God  more 
deeply  than  is  customary  then  doth  it  certify  unto  itself 
that  He  is  within  it;  it  doth  feel  it,  I  say,  with  an  under¬ 
standing  so  marvellous  and  so  profound,  and  with  such 
great  love  and  divine  fire,  that  it  loseth  all  love  for  itself 
and  for  the  body,  and  it  speaketh  and  knoweth  and  under- 
standeth  those  things  of  the  which  it  hath  never  heard  from 
any  mortal  whatsoever.  And  it  understandeth  with  great 
illumination,  and  with  much  difficulty  doth  it  hold  its  peace. 
[The  Book  of  Divine  Consolations  of  the  Blessed  Angela  of 
Foligno,  p.  25.] 

When  I  behold  and  am  in  that  Good,  I  remember  nothing 
of  the  humanity  of  Christ,  of  God,  inasmuch  as  he  was  man, 
nor  of  aught  else  that  was  shaped  or  formed  and  albeit  I 
seem  to  see  nothing  yet  do  I  see  all  things.  \The  Book  of 
Divine  Consolations  of  the  Blessed  Angela  of  Foligno,  p. 
184.] 

It  is  superfluous  to  multiply  examples.  Let  me  pro¬ 
ceed  at  once  to  the  more  satisfying  task  of  analysis. 

(1)  It  is  quite  clear  from  these  quotations  that  the 
mystic  is  an  initiate,  one  to  whom  has  been  granted  a 
view  of  The  Inside.  To  him  the  doors  have  been 
opened ;  from  his  eyes  the  veils  have  fallen ;  he  has  been 
a  sharer  in  the  counsels  of  The  Most  High.  He  knows 
the  secret,  then.  But  this  secret  is  not  the  guarded 
treasure  of  an  esoteric  cult:  it  is  “one  which  the  re¬ 
ligious  spirit  tries  not  to  keep  but  to  give  away.”  It  is 
like  the  secret  of  the  lover,  whose  love,  illuminating 
the  universe,  fills  him  with  missionary  zeal  towards 
those  who  sit  in  darkness.  It  is  like  the  secret  of  the 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


73 


artist.  “The  sight  never  beheld  it,  nor  has  the  hand 
expressed  it ;  it  is  an  ideal  residing  in  the  breast  of  the 
artist  which  he  is  always  labouring  to  impart  and 
which  he  dies  at  last  without  imparting.”3  This  labour 
to  impart,  a  desire,  of  a  truly  feverish  intensity,  to  ex¬ 
press  the  inexpressible,  is  one  of  the  most  obvious  things 
about  the  mystics.  Their  revelation,  whatever  else  is 
to  be  said  about  it,  makes  no  claim  to  be  any  'private 
truth. 

(2)  Nor  does  it  claim  any  novelty.  William  James 
and  others  have  pointed  out  the  resemblance  between 
mystical  insight  and  those  experiences  in  which  we 
realise  afresh  or  for  the  first  time  some  ancient  truth. 
It  ‘dawns’  on  us  or  we  ‘wake  up’  to  it.  Here  it  has  been 
tumbling  about  at  our  feet,  like  Justice  in  The  Repub¬ 
lic,  and  we  never  saw  it  until  now.  This  quality  of 
reco gnition  in  the  mystical  revelation  is  signalised  in 
most  interesting  fashion  by  Plotinus.  He  makes  a  dis¬ 
tinction  between  the  experience  of  Beauty  and  that  of 
the  One.  The  former  is  always  accompanied  by  sur¬ 
prise  and  amazement.  Of  the  latter  he  writes, 

But  one  must  not  ask,  Whence  comes  it?  For  there  is  no 
question  of  whence.  For  it  neither  comes  nor  goes,  but  it 
appears  and  it  does  not  appear.  Therefore  one  should  not 
pursue  it,  but  having  prepared  himself  to  behold  it,  should 
quietly  wait  until  it  appears,  as  the  eyes  await  the  rays  of 
the  sun.  ...  It  comes  not  as  though  one  looked  for  it, 
but  it  comes  as  one  who  does  not  come  ...  so  that  one  is 
at  a  loss  to  tell  whence  it  has  appeared,  from  within  or 

3  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  Discourses  on  Art,  Quoted  by  Palgrave, 
Introd.  to  Golden  Treasury. 


74 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


from  without;  and  when  it  has  passed  one  says:  After  all 
it  was  within;  and  yet  it  was  not  within.  \Enn.,  I,  iii,  2, 
and  Enn.,  V,  v,  8.  Cf.  Enn I,  vi,  4.] 

The  mystic,  every  mystic,  declares  that  he  has  dis¬ 
covered — God!  Hardly  a  new  insight  this,  it  would 
seem,  nor  yet  one  to  be  proclaimed  to  all  mankind  as 
an  unheard-of  revelation.  Indeed,  there  is  a  naivete 
here  akin  to  that  of  lovers,  every  pair  of  whom  is,  in 
their  own  eyes,  the  first  pair,  while  a  sophisticated 
world  watches  and  reflects  that  this  sort  of  thing  has 
now  been  going  on  for  a  long  time.  In  short,  there  is 
nothing  original  in  mystic  knowledge  unless  indeed 
originality  consists  not  so  much  in  the  discovery  of  the 
new  as  in  the  rediscovery  of  the  eternal. 

(3)  But,  though  in  one  sense  public  and  even  ob¬ 
vious  as  a  platitude,  the  mystic  insight  is  not  to  be  won 
without  a  certain  preparation  of  the  will,  above  all  of 
the  moral  will.  One  might  hastily  infer  from  this  that 
the  mystic  has  hit  upon  a  method,  or  shall  we  not 
frankly  say  a  dodge,  for  discovering  truth  which  can 
be  discovered  in  no  other  way.  Yet  we  may  observe 
that,  in  general,  we  are  not  unfamiliar  with  the  idea 
that  in  all  cognitive  enterprises  there  are  definite  ways 
of  approach  to  be  considered.  The  truth  is  not  to  be 
won  by  violence.  Some  social  virtues,  we  think,  are  re¬ 
quired  of  any  man  who  is  to  find  his  way  to  an  under¬ 
standing  of  his  subject.  Impartiality,  dispassionate¬ 
ness,  sincerity,  some  touch  of  reverence,  perhaps, — in 
the  honourable  code  of  the  modern  investigator  all 
these  find  their  place.  We  insist  upon  them  above  all  in 
the  truths  of  human  relationship  and  in  judgments 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


75 


upon  art  and  religion.  Let  a  man  refuse  to  conform  to 
the  necessary  conditions  here,  and  the  result  will  be  to 
impress  upon  us  not  so  much  what  he  has  made  of 
these  things  as  what  they  have  made  of  him.  And  the 
meaning  of  this  is  that  we  must  find  a  place  in  the 
theory  of  knowledge  for  the  category  of  response. 

An  illustration  may  help  to  explain  this  point. 

You  have  heard,  let  us  say,  of  the  anaesthetic  reve¬ 
lation.  In  the  hope  of  gaining  an  intellectual  illumina¬ 
tion  you  inhale  nitrous  oxide  gas.  Revelation,  of  a  sort, 
comes.  That  is  not  response ;  it  is  not  even  espionage ;  it 
is  magic.  You  discover  no  connection  between  your  ex¬ 
periment  and  its  result,  between  doing  something  to 
your  body  and  receiving  something  into  your  mind. 
Indeed,  you  do  not  really  receive  it  into  your  mind  at 
all,  because  your  mind  was  precisely  what  was  not  pre¬ 
pared  to  receive  it.  And  this  is  proved  by  the  fact  that, 
whatever  certainties  may  be  vouchsafed  to  you  in  the 
revelation,  you  cannot  retain  them  afterwards. 

Again,  you  discover  that  there  are  certain  condi¬ 
tions  in  which  you  think  best  and  work  best :  you  know 
the  temperature  or  the  amount  of  sleep  or  food  or  exer¬ 
cise  most  favourable  to  your  mental  activity.  You  are 
careful  to  observe  these  conditions.  This  is  admittedly 
not  open  to  the  same  criticism.  Why?  The  chief  reason 
is  that  the  bodily  conditions  are  not  held  to  be  suffi¬ 
cient;  they  are  simply  negative  conditions  without 
which  mental  activity  in  general  would  not  take  place, 
and  it  is  this  activity — “the  flow  of  ideas” — which  is 
your  primary  object.  But  we  have  not  yet  reached  the 
stage  of  response. 


76 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


You  have  been  working  upon  an  intellectual  prob¬ 
lem  and  you  have  got  “stuck.”  Taught  by  past  experi¬ 
ence  you  know  when  to  abandon  a  type  of  effort  which 
has  become  worse  than  useless  and  simply  to  wait  for 
the  ‘inspiration.’  This,  in  spite  of  the  element  of  mys¬ 
teriousness, — an  element  which  is  not  removed  by  call¬ 
ing  it  subconscious, — is  response.  The  solving  idea 
completes  your  efforts  in  the  moment  when  it  reveals 
to  you  their  true  direction.  “This  is  what  I  have  been 
looking  for  all  along.”  The  revelation  when  it  comes  is 
wholly  continuous  with  your  meaning.  The  solution  is 
a  real  solution  and  no  mere  interruptive  ‘communica¬ 
tion,’  because  you  had  first  learned  to  formulate  the 
problem  aright. 

In  dealing  with  the  special  preparation  of  the  mystic 
and  its  culmination  we  are  dealing  with  a  response 
of  this  kind.  It  differs  from  other  types  of  response  in 
that  the  mystic’s  object,  God,  is  primarily  an  object 
of  love  and  the  preparation  essentially  a  moral  one.  But 
for  our  present  purpose  these  distinctions  are  not  im¬ 
portant;  what  is  important  is  that  there  is  nothing 
magical  about  the  mystical  revelation  and  that  the 
same  category  of  response  which  is  valid  in  other  de¬ 
partments  of  knowledge  holds  good  also  for  the  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  religious  object. 

(4)  Whatever  truth  the  mystics  have  come  upon 
it  is  not  any  particular  truth.  They  have  of  course  re¬ 
ceived  a  formidable  number  of  revelations,  but  their 
typical  achievement  in  this  respect  and  the  one  univer¬ 
sally  celebrated  among  them  is  not  to  be  defined  as  an 
item  or  group  of  items  to  be  added  to  our  stock  of 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


77 


scientific  and  philosophical  knowledge.  If  one  reads 
again  those  quotations  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter 
it  is  clear  that  one  is  dealing  with  a  knowledge  of 
some  total — “the  whole  working  essence,”  “the  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  whole,”  is  somehow  given  at  once.  This  is 
what  they  are  trying  to  declare  by  their  constant  use 
of  such  terms  as  wayless,  pathless,  abysmal,  modeless, 
to  describe  the  form  of  their  knowledge  and  by  re¬ 
ferring  to  its  content  as  a  darkness,  a  wilderness,  etc. 
If  we  take  the  discursive  reason  as  a  source  of  “light,” 
then,  judged  by  that  standard,  the  mystic  knowledge 
is  darkness. 

Some  of  them  have  gone  further  than  merely  nega¬ 
tive  terms  to  exhibit  the  contrast.  One  of  the  most  strik¬ 
ing  statements  of  this  kind  by  an  individual  mystic  is 
to  be  found  in  Julian  of  Norwich.  “And  after  this,” 
she  says,  “I  saw  God  in  a  Point,  that  is  to  say  in  mine 
understanding, — by  which  I  saw  that  He  is  in  all 
things.”  The  meaning  of  this  appears  later  in  her  ac¬ 
count.  She  was  tempted  to  ask  for  a  particular  item  of 
knowledge,  about  the  “spiritual  faring”  of  a  friend. 

And  in  this  desire  for  a  singular  Shewing  it  seemed  that 
I  hindered  myself :  for  I  was  not  taught  in  this  time.  And 
then  I  was  answered  in  my  reason,  as  it  were,  by  a  friendly 
intervenor:  Take  it  generally  and  behold  the  graciousness 
of  the  Lord  God  as  he  sheweth  to  thee :  for  it  is  more  wor¬ 
ship  to  God  to  behold  Him  in  all  than  in  any  special  thing. 
.  .  .For  the  fullness  of  Joy  is  to  behold  God  in  all  .  .  . 
And  the  ground  of  this  was  shewed  in  the  First  [revelation], 
and  more  openly  in  the  Third,  where  it  saith,  T  saw  God  in 
a  Point.’  [ Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  chaps,  ii.  and  xxxv.] 


78 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


The  distinction  between  mystical  and  other  kinds  of 
knowledge  has  been  elaborated  by  St.  John  of  the  Cross. 
According  to  him  there  are  two  kinds  of  ‘‘spiritual, 
supernatural  knowledge :  one  distinct  and  special ;  the 
other  confused,  obscure  and  general.  .  .  .  The  second 
kind  .  .  .  has  but  one  form,  that  of  contemplation, 
which  is  the  work  of  faith.”4  “In  one  way  the  soul  re¬ 
ceives  the  knowledge  of  one,  two,  or  three  truths;  but 
in  the  other  the  Wisdom  of  God  generally,  which  is 
His  Son,  in  one  simple,  universal  knowledge,  com¬ 
municated  to  the  soul  by  faith.”5 

So  far  we  have  been  undertaking  to  describe  only  the 
form  of  the  mystic  knowledge.  But  what  of  its  content? 

The  first  effect  made  upon  a  reader  of  those  quota¬ 
tions  given  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  is  likely  to 
have  been  one  of  dizziness.  These  people  are  whirling 
too  persistently  round  something  of  mighty  import. 
I  f  they  would  only  stop  for  a  moment  one  might  get  a 
chance  to  see  It.  Or  shall  we  say  that  we  have  to  do 
with  a  group  whose  stammering  betokens  either  a 
natural  defect  or  a  cult?  This  impression  is  likely  to  be 
deepened  by  an  extended  acquaintance  with  mystical 
literature. 

Yet,  on  scrutiny,  I  think  we  can  detect  two  distinct 
causes  for  their  jubilation  and  excitement:  first,  an 
actual  attainment;  second,  a  prophetic  attainment. 

( i )  The  mystics  have  declared  that  the  God  whom 
they  sought  has  made  himself  known  to  them  in  direct 

4  Ascent  of  Mount  Carmel,  Book  II,  ch.  x. 

5  lb.,  ch.  xxix. 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


79 


presence.  This  seems  to  constitute  more  than  half  the 
burden  of  their  revelation;  this  is  the  announcement 
to  which  they  return  with  wearying,  if  unwearied  repe¬ 
tition.  When  they  try  to  tell  more  they  grow  inarticu¬ 
late.  That  they  know  is  painfully  evident;  what  they 
know  does  not  emerge. 

This  predicament  of  theirs  has  led  some  writers  to 
suggest  that  the  experience  is  identical  in  kind  with 
those  dream  states  in  which  we  possess  the  form  of 
certainty  without  any  content.  A  fairer  comparison, 
I  think,  is  the  experience  in  which  some  familiar  truth 
becomes  immediately  experienced  fact,  when,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  “all  men  are  mortal’ ’  becomes  “I  too  must  die.” 
In  such  cases  the  familiar  truth  is  seen  to  concern  me, 
a  law  of  nature  to  have  its  point  of  contact  with  my  in¬ 
dividual  destiny.  What  thereupon  becomes  important, 
because  novel,  is  not  the  thing  found  but  the  finding. 
When  the  truth  or  the  object  in  question  has  been  long 
sought  for  and  is  highly  prized  then  the  discovery  or 
the  experiencing  of  it,  although  it  may  add  nothing  to 
its  content,  properly  calls  for  celebration.  Art  is  the 
natural  human  form  for  this  to  take.  One  must  dance 
out  or  sing  out  one’s  discovery.  Here,  for  example,  is 
the  poet  in  presence  of  the  spring — an  ancient  and  by 
this  time  presumably  a  familiar  phenomenon: 

Though  even  the  sight  that  salutes  them  again  and 
adores  them  awhile  is  blest, 

And  the  heart  is  a  hymn,  and  the  sense  is  a  soul, 
and  the  soul  is  a  song.6 


6  Swinburne,  Hawthorntide. 


8o 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


Or  again, 

In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hours 
Of  visitation  from  the  living  God 
Thought  was  not;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 

No  thanks  he  breathed,  he  proffered  no  request; 

Rapt  into  still  communion  that  transcends 
The  imperfect  offices  of  prayer  and  praise, 

His  mind  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  power 
That  made  him,  it  was  blessedness  and  love.7 

When  we  come  to  the  more  pronounced  type  of  mys¬ 
tical  experience  it  need  not  surprise  us  to  find  religious 
knowledge  indistinguishable  from  a  kind  of  religious 
lyricism. 

It  is  said  that  the  nightingale  is  given  to  song  and  melody 
all  night,  that  she  may  please  him  to  whom  she  is  joined. 
How  mickle  more  should  I  sing  with  greatest  sweetness  to 
Christ  my  Jesu,  that  is  Spouse  of  my  soul  through  all  this 
present  life  that  is  night  in  regard  to  the  clearness  to  come, 
so  that  I  should  languish  in  longing  and  die  for  love. 
But  in  dying  I  shall  wax  strong,  and  in  heat  I  shall  be 
nourished;  and  I  shall  joy  and  in  joying  sing  the  likings 
of  love  with  mirth,  and  hot  devotion  as  it  were  from  a  pipe 
shall  issue  and  my  soul  shall  yield  angels’  melody,  kindled 
within,  to  the  most  high,  and  offered  by  the  mouth  at  the 
altar  of  God’s  praise.  [Richard  Rolle,  The  Fire  of  Love , 
Book  II,  ch.  xii.] 

Revelation  here  is  merged  in  adoration  and  we  can  see 
why  this  is  so.  As  Hocking  says,  “Song  and  poetry  are 
forms  which  infinitely  repeatable  truth  must  take :  they 


7  Wordsworth,  Excursion  I. 


THE  MYSTIC  CLAIM 


8 1 


thus  become  the  mystic’s  specialty,  and  revelation  must 
consist  largely  of  the  song  of  God.”8 

(2)  The  essence  of  that  transition  from  truth  con¬ 
ventionally  accepted  to  truth  personally  apprehended 
might  be  expressed  in  this  way:  “All  men  are  mortal” 
leaves  me  indifferent;  “I  too  must  die”  means  that 
something  has  to  be  done  about  it,  possibly  something 
in  the  way  of  overt  action,  even  if  it  be  nothing  more 
unusual  than  making  a  will,  certainly  something  in 
the  way  of  reflection.  None  of  the  familiar  assumptions 
of  living  may  remain  unaffected  by  this  discovery.  It 
is  some  awareness  of  the  remote  bearings  of  this  knowl¬ 
edge  upon  thought  and  conduct,  some  prophetic  as¬ 
surance  that  in  order  to  assimilate  it  we  shall  have  to 
make  over  our  whole  body  of  ideas,  that  makes  it  seem 
at  once  momentous  and  mysterious. 

But  in  seeking  analogies  to  mystical  illumination 
we  need  not  confine  ourselves  to  illustrations  of  this 
kind;  the  mystics  themselves  have  described  their  at¬ 
tainment  as  a  seeing  into  the  meaning  of  the  universe, 
a  seeing  of  how  all  things  belong  together.  They  have 
found  the  clue. 

The  experience  in  which  one  finds  the  clue  or  the 
hypothesis,  in  which  the  idea  dawns  on  us,  has  two 
marks.  First,  the  attention  is  fixed  almost  exclusively 
upon  the  solving  idea  and  hardly  at  all  upon  the  many 
facts  which  it  is  destined  to  explain.  It  is  defined,  of 
course,  as  the  explanation  of  these  facts,  but  for  the 

8  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  452.  Cf.  James, 
Varieties,  pp.  420-421,  and  Pratt,  The  Religious  Consciousness,  p. 
468. 


82 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


moment  the  mind  is  concerned  with  identification 
rather  than  with  definition. 

Second,  clues  are  things  to  be  followed  up;  hypothe¬ 
ses  have  to  be  tested  and  made  good ;  ideas  have  to  be 
worked  out.  At  the  moment  we  are  only  confusedly 
aware  of  the  working  out  that  has  to  be  done:  what 
we  insist  upon  is  that  we  have  got  hold  of  that  which 
is  to  be  worked  out.  When  pressed  to  declare  what  we 
have  got  hold  of  we  find  ourselves  relatively  helpless : 
we  can  only  chatter  about  “profound  insights”  and  re¬ 
port  the  discovery  of  something  teeming  with  sig¬ 
nificance.  It  would  be  easy  of  course  to  take  our  crowd¬ 
ing  asseverations  as  indicating  the  form  of  certainty 
without  the  content,  but  it  would  not  necessarilv  be 
just. 

I  suggest  therefore  that  here  we  have  the  proper 
analogy  to  the  mystic’s  intuition;  that  we  should  take 
his  utterances  as  constituting  a  claim  to  possess  a  clue 
to  the  nature  of  reality,  a  clue  which  can  be  defined 
only  by  exhibiting  those  things  to  which  it  is  the  clue — 
that  is,  by  making  connections  between  it  and  the  rest 
of  our  knowledge  by  whatever  means  attained. 

The  certainty  of  the  presence  of  God,  the  certainty 
of  having  found  the  clue  to  reality — these,  in  briefest 
formulation,  compose  the  mystics’  cognitive  claim.  The 
purpose  of  this  chapter  has  only  been  to  describe,  by 
whatever  aids  we  could  muster,  what  that  claim  is. 
The  testing  of  it  is  another  task. 


NOTE 

THE  ECSTASY  AND  UNCONSCIOUSNESS 


A  PRELIMINARY  difficulty  which  I  have  not 
considered  in  the  foregoing  chapter  stands  in  the 
way  of  any  theory  of  mystical  revelation.  The  difficulty 
is  this:  The  conditions  of  the  ecstatic  state,  it  is  said, 
are  such  as  to  rule  out  the  possibility  of  any  knowledge 
being  contained  in  it.  Mystical  simplification  reaches 
its  climax  in  a  consciousness  of  one  thing — God;  but, 
to  repeat  the  ancient  truism,  to  be  conscious  of  one 
thing  only  is  not  to  be  conscious.  Consequently  we  are 
not  surprised  to  find  some  mystics  declaring  that  the 
ecstasy  involves  a  complete,  if  brief,  disappearance  of 
consciousness. 

In  trying  to  reach  a  conclusion  upon  this  difficult 
matter  the  following  considerations  are  important. 

(i)  As  against  the  statements  from  the  mystics 
asserting  that  they  were  unconscious  during  ecstasy 
must  be  set  such  statements  as  those  quoted  at  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  the  chapter  in  which  the  noetic  quality  of 
the  experience  is  emphasised. 

(2)  One  may  try  to  reconcile  the  two  sets  of  state¬ 
ments  as  Leuba  does.  He  maintains  that  on  the  return 
to  consciousness  the  temporary  discontinuity  of  ecstasy 
is  interpreted  by  the  mystic  as  having  been  a  conscious¬ 
ness  of  nothing,  a  nothing  which  is  then  identified  with 
the  ineffable  One  of  mystical  philosophy.  As  Delacroix 
puts  it,  “ce  vide  de  conscience,  ce  rien,  devenu  objet  de 
pensee  pour  la  conscience  revenue,  prend  existence  et 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


84 

devient  le  rien  qui  est.  Cette  confusion  permet  de 
diviniser  l’inconscience  de  l’extase,  d’assimiler  une 
pseudo-experience  a  une  doctrine.”1  I  agree  with 
Leuba  that  the  mystics  mix  doctrine  with  their  reports 
of  experience;  but  that  is  precisely  why  we  should  re¬ 
gard  their  reports  with  a  critical  eye.  They  are  eager, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  differentiate  their  knowledge  from 
discursive  reasoning,  and  in  emphasising  this  distinc¬ 
tion  they  have  made  use  of  a  doctrine  ancient  enough  in 
Christian  mysticism  at  any  rate,  the  doctrine  that,  as 
Clement  of  Alexandria  expresses  it,  God  is  to  be  sought 
as  Moses  sought  him — in  darkness.  The  constant  re¬ 
currence  of  the  same  metaphors  and  the  same  images 
shows  that  we  are  dealing  with  theory  and  tradition 
as  well  as  with  first-hand  experience.  Consequently  I 
am  inclined  to  reverse  the  order  of  importance  attached 
by  Leuba  to  these  two  factors  and  to  say  that  the  tradi¬ 
tional  formulation  of  the  mystics’  preparation  has 
coloured  their  reports  of  their  experiences,  leading 
them  to  declare  a  complete  suspension  of  conscious¬ 
ness  where  in  fact  there  may  have  been  no  such  thing. 

In  the  absence  of  further  evidence,  however,  such  a 
preference  of  one  factor  as  prior  may  well  seem  arbi¬ 
trary.  And  that  evidence  cannot  be  particularised 
here,  for  in  one  sense  it  must  consist  of  one’s  judgment 
of  mysticism  as  a  whole.  If  you  grant  that  the  most 
acute  and  faithful  scrutiny  of  ecstasy,  whether  by  the 
mystics  themselves  or  their  observers,  leaves  it  still  an 
open  question  whether  consciousness  has  there  lapsed 

1  Etudes  d’Histoire  et  de  Psychologie  du  Mysticisme,  p.  382. 


THE  ECSTASY  AND  UNCONSCIOUSNESS  85 

or  not,  your  opinion  (if  you  are  going  to  decide)  must 
in  the  last  resort  be  determined  by  some  comprehensive 
view  of  the  mystic  life  in  its  entirety.  For  my  own  part, 
I  cannot  believe  that  any  experience  which  is  not  only 
followed  by,  but  necessitates  a  return  to,  “the  world,” 
with  an  invigorated  grasp  upon  its  manifold  interests, 
can  ever  have  involved  a  total  surrender  of  that  world 
in  idea  or  in  any  other  fashion.  Ecstasy  is  more  than 
an  interruption  in  life,  and  therefore  it  is  not  reason¬ 
able  to  suppose  that  discontinuity  has  been  complete. 
The  final  evidence  therefore  must  wait  until  the  argu¬ 
ment  of  this  essay  is  before  us  in  its  entirety.2 

2  I  stated  above  that  for  empirical  psychology  the  question  is  still 
an  open  one.  In  support  of  this  statement  I  quote  some  divergent 
opinions.  Delacroix  who  gives  an  extended  discussion  of  this 
matter  [Etudes,  pp.  381  ff.],  writes:  “Sur  la  question  de  fait,  il  nous 
semble  que  le  temoignage  des  mystiques  est  en  faveur  de  la  per¬ 
sistence  d’une  certaine  forme  de  conscience’’  (p.  383).  Flournoy 
says,  “Beaucoup  font  un  moment  d’inconscience  absolue.  .  .  . 
D’autres,  au  contraire,  habitues  aux  conceptions  de  la  psychologie 
subliminale,  estiment  que  le  trou  laiss6  par  la  trance  dans  les  sou¬ 
venirs  du  sujet  n’est  qu’apparent,  et  concerne  seulement  son  moi 
ordinaire.  .  .  .  En  pratique,  et  comme  ‘hypothese  de  travail,’  je 
n’hesite  pas  a  preferer  le  second  point  de  vue.”  [Archiv.  de  Psych., 
XV,  pp.  178  ff.]  De  Montmorand  maintains  that  the  utterances  of 
the  mystics  are  too  definite  and  precise  “pour  qu’on  hesite  a  les 
prendre  au  sens  litteral  quand  on  y  voit  que  la  ‘contemplation  pure’ — 
1’extase  a  son  degre  superieur — implique  la  cessation  de  toute 
operation  intellectuelle,  ou  du  moins  de  toute  operation  discursive.” 
[Psychologie  des  Mystiques,  p.  178.] 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  IMMEDIATE  EXPERIENCE 

OF  GOD 

THE  mystic  declares  that  he  has  seen  God.  The  re¬ 
lationship  has  been  intimate  and  direct, — I-and- 
Thou  between  the  soul  and  God.  What  are  we,  as  sober 
enquirers,  to  make  of  this  experience  ? 

I  have  to  confess  at  the  outset  to  a  certain  prejudice 
in  this  matter  which  makes  a  fair  judgment  hard  to 
come  at.  I  do  not  like  the  idea  of  a  God  who  unbends 
to  me  personally.  There  is  something  stuffy  and  provin¬ 
cial  in  the  thought  that  my  salvation  is  important  in 
the  scheme  of  things.  This,  after  all,  is  a  republican 
Deity,  ready  to  shake  hands  with  the  humblest  citizen 
and  to  call  him  by  his  name.  He  lacks  a  necessary 
dimension  of  Godhead,  some  of  the  Olympian  remote¬ 
ness  and  mystery  of  the  Aristotelian  Deity  who  did 
not  condescend  to  notice  the  world  and  its  affairs,  but 
who  drew  the  world  after  him  not  by  what  he  did  but 
by  what  he  was.  Of  him  one  can  say  with  Spinoza, 
“Whoso  loves  God  must  not  expect  God  to  love  him  in 
return.” 

Yet  as  I  contemplate  the  fate  of  the  Olympians  and 
the  recurrence  in  the  history  of  religion  of  the  mystical 
assurance  of  a  personal  salvation  to  be  realised  by  each 
individual,  I  find  it  only  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
such  assurance  answers  to  no  mere  transient  religious 
need  such  as  enlightenment  may  displace  but  to  some 


88 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


permanent  hunger  in  human  nature.  Guided  by  this 
reflection  1  can  see  at  least  two  shafts  of  light  that 
illuminate  the  problem  of  the  immediate  knowledge 
of  God. 

(i)  A  God  who  is  the  God  of  the  whole  universe 
and  not  also  of  its  details  is  not  sufficient  for  religion. 
I  am  not  now  thinking  of  the  familiar  pragmatic  criti¬ 
cism  that  such  a  God  is  an  idle  or  ineffectual  being 
because,  as  author  of  everything,  He  is  author  of  noth¬ 
ing  in  particular,  but  of  a  specific  kind  of  working 
which  religion  must  attribute  to  God.  I  emphasise  the 
word  religion  here,  for  a  Being  who  determines  the 
destiny  of  all  men,  saving  a  universal  Humanity  on  a 
large  scale,  who  presides  over  the  laws  of  nature  and 
whose  hand  is  to  be  seen  only  in  the  control  of  the 
divine  far-off  event,  and  in  operations  of  a  like  cosmic 
sweep,  is  a  God  that  will  satisfy  only  the  philosopher 
and  the  scientist.  His  freezing  impersonality  is  fit¬ 
tingly  recognised  in  such  names  as  Divine  Principle, 
Moral  Order  of  the  Universe,  etc.  Indeed,  under  in¬ 
spection,  He  begins  to  look  less  like  a  monarch  and 
more  like  a  magnified  version  of  that  sinister  figure  of 
our  time — the  executive  official  who  is  too  busy  with 
“the  large  lines  of  policy”  (whatever  that  may  mean) 
to  have  time  for  the  details.  Such  a  Being  may  satisfy 
the  demand  for  an  explanation,  but  what  religion  an¬ 
nounces  is  not  “I  have  explained  the  world,”  but  “I 
have  overcome  the  world.”  And  the  world  is  not  over¬ 
come,  nor  the  problem  of  evil  met,  by  the  conception 
of  any  far-off  event  or  any  good  of  the  whole  universe 
such  as  may  be  supposed  to  constitute  the  purpose  of 


THE  IMMEDIATE  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD  89 

this  Being.  How  shall  it  heal  my  hurt  now  to  know 
that  ‘in  the  long  run’  or  ‘on  the  whole’  my  evil  is  God’s 
good  or  the  good  of  the  whole  universe?  God  has  been 
defined  as  the  Absolute  Stranger  between  whose  pur¬ 
pose  and  mine  there  is  no  discoverable  point  of  iden¬ 
tity  ;  there  remains  therefore  not  only  no  motive  why  I 
should  acquiesce  in  my  suffering  or  sacrifice  my  private 
advantage  for  the  sake  of  this  God  and  His  plans,  but 
no  ultimate  means  whereby  I  may  see  through  this 
suffering.  If,  then,  the  specific  religious  need  is  to  be 
satisfied  the  transcendent  God  is  not  sufficient;  there 
must  be  a  possibility  of  communion  between  the  soul 
and  God  whereby  the  individual  can  see  that  God’s 
purpose  is  also  his — in  short,  that  God  is  interested 
in  him.  The  mystic  immediacy,  then,  can  be  taken  as 
a  necessary  criticism  of  the  claims  of  the  God  who  is 
wholly  transcendent.  It  is  the  opaqueness  between  man 
and  God  that  the  mystic  seeks  to  overcome.1 

(2)  Another  line  of  approach  lies  through  a  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  kind  of  proof  of  which  God’s  existence 
is  susceptible. 

The  validity  or  invalidity  of  any  proposed  proof  de¬ 
pends  on  our  conception  of  the  nature  of  the  being 
whose  existence  is  to  be  proved.  Thus  for  one  who 
thinks  of  God  primarily  as  Creator  or  as  Designer  the 
first  cause  argument  or  the  design  argument  will  seem 
sufficient;  while  if  these  are  rejected  it  will  be  because, 
whatever  they  prove,  they  do  not  prove  God.  Now  God 
is  not  a  physical  object  whose  existence  is  uncertain, 

1  For  further  treatment  of  this  problem  see  chapter  xii. 


90 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


therefore  His  existence  cannot  be  verified  by  the  sensory 
confirmation  of  observers,  as,  for  example,  the  existence 
of  land  at  the  South  Pole  might  be  verified.  Again, 
God  is  not  a  person  among  persons,  a  member  of  a 
society,  a  finite  being  who  may  or  may  not  exist.  There¬ 
fore  it  would  be  inappropriate  to  try  to  verify  His  exist¬ 
ence  as  we  should  try  to  verify  that  (say)  of  Mrs. 
Harris,  or  to  apply  the  tests  that  we  might  apply  to 
some  “psychical”  phenomenon  which  was  asserted  to 
be  the  soul  of  someone  known  to  us.  God,  it  would 
seem,  is  not  a  being  whom  we  begin  to  know  at  a 
definite  moment  of  time.  His  status,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  knowledge,  is  not  precarious,  as  that  of  other 
objects  is,  in  the  sense  that  at  one  time  they  may  be 
unknown  and  at  another  known.  We  may  put  this  in 
various  ways.  We  may  say  that  the  idea  of  God  is  not 
just  one  more  idea  added  to  the  stock  of  ideas  in  the 
mind  at  any  one  time;  or  that  the  existence  of  God  is 
the  fixed  point  in  all  discussions  and  the  only  question 
is  that  of  the  nature  of  God;  or,  following  Hume’s  line 
of  argument  in  the  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion,  we 
may  point  out  how  the  traditional  proofs  presuppose 
the  idea  of  that  which  they  are  seeking  to  establish. 

If  then  God  is  cognitively  inescapable,  if  in  some 
sense  we  know  Him  all  the  time,  the  proof  of  God  must 
consist  in  a  kind  of  reminding  ourselves  of  God  or  of 
realising  what  was  implied,  what  “we  meant  all 
along,”  in  our  efforts  as  rational  and  moral  beings. 

But  now  we  have  to  observe  that  not  logic  but  ex¬ 
perience  only  can  initiate  such  a  judgment.  He  who 
thus  retrospectively  interprets  his  restlessness,  whether 


THE  IMMEDIATE  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD  91 

he  be  lover  or  weaver  of  syllogisms  or  author  of  Hege¬ 
lian  dialectics,  is  in  the  immediate  presence  of  that 
which  he  sought.  One  must  simply  see  or  possess  a 
truth  before  one  can  say:  This  is  the  idea  that  pos¬ 
sessed  me  though  I  did  not  know  it.  Thus  we  can  say 
that  every  higher  synthesis,  together  with  the  judg¬ 
ment  of  the  thesis  and  antithesis  as  abstractions,  pre¬ 
supposes  a  prior  experience ;  while  the  dialectic,  taken 
as  a  whole,  presupposes  a  major  intuition  which  is  the 
inconspicuous,  because  constant,  source  of  the  entire 
movement  and  of  all  minor  intuitions.  That  truth 
which  I  seem  to  have  deduced  by  the  power  of  logic 
must  first  in  all  literalness  have  been  “borne  in  upon” 
me  before  I  can  deduce  it. 

In  sum  then  we  may  express  the  matter  thus:  The 
existence  of  God  can  never  be  inferred  from  any  other 
premises  because  the  existence  of  God  is  that  which 
makes  all  inference  possible.  Any  theory  therefore 
which  implies  that  God  is  to  be  known  chiefly  or  wholly 
as  an  inference  is  incomplete.2  From  this  point  of  view 
the  mystical  insistence  upon  the  immediate  relation¬ 
ship  to  God  may  be  read  as  a  statement  that  what  ap¬ 
pears  in  philosophy  as  an  inference  must  first  be  mat¬ 
ter  of  experience.  The  existence  of  God  must  be  “borne 
in  upon”  the  individual. 

I  claim  no  more  for  these  reflections  than  that  they 
may  shed  some  light  upon  the  problem.  Even  if  that 

2 1  am  thinking  of  such  a  system  as  that  of  Royce  wherein  God 
is  inferred  from  the  human  experience  of  error  or  of  finitude  in 
various  forms.  The  definition  of  God  which  emerges  is — God  is  that 
which  is  necessary  to  complete  the  meaning  of  this  experience. 
There  is  great  virtue,  and  great  difficulty,  in  the  “that  which.” 


92 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


claim  is  justified  the  major  part  of  the  problem  is  left 
in  darkness,  for  it  still  remains  to  find  a  way  of  think¬ 
ing  about  God  which  shall  harmonise  the  two  elements 
in  the  conception  which  we  noted  at  the  outset — God 
as  the  God  of  the  whole  universe,  transcendent,  remote, 
hovering  close  to  the  impersonal,  inspirer  of  a  proper 
awe  and  humility,  with  the  God  who  is  interested  in 
and  directly  addresses  Himself  to  the  individual.  Yet 
even  if  mysticism  contains  only  half  the  truth  it  is 
sufficient  for  our  present  purpose  to  have  brought  that 
half  into  relief. 


CHAPTER  VII 


INTUITION 

THE  mystics,  we  have  said,  claim  to  have  known 
the  universe  in  its  wholeness.  They  have  per¬ 
ceived  how  “all  things  belong  together.”  Synoptic,  in¬ 
tuitive,  are  the  terms  that  naturally  occur  to  us  in  seek¬ 
ing  to  describe  this  insight.  This  claim  seems  to  be  at 
once  too  vague  and  too  ambitious;  and  it  is  rendered 
worse  by  the  fact  that  their  knowledge  is  inarticulate. 
That  which  they  know  rejects  all  positive  predicates. 
And  what  are  we  to  make  of  a  knowledge  without 
predicates,  a  knowledge,  so  to  speak,  of  pure  subject? 
How  can  the  mind  begin  with  the  pure  subject,  with 
the  undifferentiated  whole?  Does  not  the  mind,  in 
knowing,  advance  gradually,  step  by  step,  comparing, 
subsuming,  synthetising?  Is  not  ‘the  whole’  a  mere 
limiting  concept,  an  abstraction  which  represents  not 
an  object  known  or  waiting  to  be  known,  but  merely  the 
ideal  which  regulates  our  procedure  in  cognitive  enter¬ 
prises  ? 

If  we  are  to  be  in  a  position  to  judge  the  mystic  we 
need  to  remind  ourselves  that  in  knowing  any  object 
we  not  only  begin  with  the  whole  but  we  work  con¬ 
tinually  with  that  idea  throughout  the  process  of  deep¬ 
ening  acquaintance.  To  adopt  the  convenient  termi¬ 
nology  of  Mr.  Henry  Sturt,  understanding  is  not  only 
‘part-working’  but  ‘total-working’  as  well.1  I  say  re- 

1  Principles  of  Understanding,  p.  41. 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


94 

mind  ourselves  of  this  doctrine,  because  it  is  in  no  sense 
novel.  It  has  certainly  never  been  absent  from  philoso¬ 
phy  since  the  days  of  Plato;  but  it  has  a  way  of  drop¬ 
ping  out  of  sight. 

In  order  that  we  may  see  what  is  meant  by  this 
total-working,  let  me  give  four  illustrations  of  it,  from 
perception,  from  memory,  from  creative  activity,  and 
from  conscience.  For  examples  of  the  first  two  I  cannot 
do  better  than  quote  from  Mr.  Sturt,  whose  treatment 
of  the  subject  is  comprehensive  and  acute. 

Take  a  simple  example  of  perception,  ‘There’s  a  dog.’  I 
do  not  mean,  of  course,  the  verbal  assertion,  but  the  per¬ 
ception  of  the  dog  as  it  flashes  into  the  mind  of  the  ob¬ 
server.  Such  a  mental  act  has  all  the  qualities  of  noesis :  it 
is  synoptic,  schematic  and  coactive. 

The  perception  is  synoptic  because  we  do  not  apprehend 
the  dog  piece  by  piece,  but  all  at  once.  Even  if  the  dog  is 
partly  hidden,  or  dimly  seen  in  the  dusk,  we  apprehend  it 
as  a  whole ;  not  as  a  dog  perhaps,  because  the  data  may  not 
suffice  for  that;  but  as  a  smallish  animal,  or  at  least  as  an 
object  lying  within  certain  limits  of  size. 

It  is  schematic,  because  all  our  sensuous  experience  of 
the  dog,  all  the  lines  and  shades  and  colours  which  strike 
our  eye,  are  arranged  according  to  a  certain  schema — the 
dog-schema  as  each  of  us  has  preformed  it.  Suppose  the 
object  is  dimly  seen  so  that  we  recognise  it  as  an  animal  but 
not  yet  as  a  dog.  Then  some  unmistakeable  feature  becomes 
apparent,  the  tail  for  example.  At  once  the  dog-schema  is 
awakened  in  the  mind  and  the  visual  appearance  is  appre¬ 
hended  in  relation  to  it.  It  is  in  virtue  of  the  schema  that, 
while  the  sensuous  material  presented  to  the  dog-observer 


INTUITION  95 

may  be  infinitely  various,  yet  ‘dog’  is  uniformly  perceived, 
[pp.  82-83.] 

Consider  next  the  case  of  searching  for  a  temporarily 
forgotten  name. 

The  usual  explanation  of  the  process  of  recovering  the 
name  is  that  the  agent  thinks  of  all  the  things  which  lie 
contiguous  to  it,  so  that  their  associations  with  it  may  drag 
it  to  the  surface  of  consciousness.  Thus  does  William  James 
explain  the  matter;  but  he  adds  a  fact  which  is  specially 
significant  from  my  point  of  view.  The  place  of  the  thing 
sought  for,  he  says,  is  a  gap;  but  it  is  an  “aching  gap.” 
Here,  as  always,  James’  insight  was  better  than  his  theory. 
Why  does  the  gap  ache?  The  part-working  theory  cannot 
tell  us,  but  the  total-working  theory  can.  The  meaning  of 
‘aching’  I  take  to  be  that  we  are  not  entirely  ignorant  of 
the  name,  but  know  its  pattern  vaguely;  as  that  it  begins 
with  B,  has  three  syllables,  and  so  on.  We  can  say  with  cer¬ 
tainty  that  it  is  not  this  or  that,  though  we  cannot  say  what 
it  is.  There  is  more  than  one  way  of  trying  to  recall  a  name. 
We  may  treat  the  name  as  an  element  in  a  larger  pattern; 
that  is,  rehearse  various  scenes  in  which  the  man  played  a 
part  and  so  recover  the  name ;  or  we  may  treat  the  name  it¬ 
self  as  a  pattern  and  try  to  complete  its  vague  outline.  In 
either  case  we  have  something  vague  before  the  mind  which 
obstinately  refuses  to  define  itself  satisfactorily;  and  this 
tantalising  experience,  I  think,  is  what  James  meant  by  his 
“aching  gap.”  [pp.  71-72.] 

The  clearest  and  most  indisputable  examples  of  this 
total-working  are  to  be  found  in  the  creative  operations 
of  the  mind.  Whether  the  thing  created  is  a  simple 
spoken  sentence  or  a  poem  the  principle  is  the  same. 
Before  one  speaks  one  knows  in  a  general  way  what 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


96 

one  wants  to  say,  but  one  does  not  know  it  as  a  definite 
series  of  words.  Speech  is  not  a  rehearsal.  This  total 
meaning  determines  within  limits  both  the  starting 
point  and  the  order  of  the  words.  Further,  as  we  speak 
we  discover  more  clearly  just  what  it  was  we  wanted 
to  say.  This,  I  take  it,  is  also  true  of  the  writing  of  a 
poem.  The  author  begins  with  an  idea  of,  or  rather  for, 
the  poem  as  a  whole:  he  has  an  inspiration  or  an  in¬ 
tuition.  But  the  idea  is  not  explicit  to  begin  with.  “Tell 
me  your  idea,”  we  say  to  him.  “Wait,  wait!  Give  me 
a  chance!”  is  the  reply.  A  chance  for  what?  To  write 
the  poem — that  is,  to  articulate  the  idea.  The  process 
of  writing  the  poem  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  the 
articulating  of  the  original  idea.  “In  this  cognitive 
process  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  intuition  from 
expression.”2 

To  show  what  I  mean  by  conscience  I  will  give  an 
example  of  what  may  be  called  the  professional  con¬ 
science.  When  we  say  that  a  doctor  has  a  professional 
conscience  we  mean  that  he  has  a  power  of  recognising 
intuitively  those  things  which  it  would  not  become  him, 
as  a  doctor,  to  do.  Of  course  there  exists  a  body  of  rules 
prescribing  what  may  and  may  not  be  done  profes¬ 
sionally,  rules  which  are  themselves,  perhaps,  a  deposit 
of  conscience;  but  in  addition  to  these,  which  have 
crystallised  out,  so  to  speak,  there  are  other  rules  exist¬ 
ing  in  solution,  new  points  of  scruple  to  be  defined, 
new  lines  to  be  drawn.  It  is  with  this  undefined  margin 
and  not  with  the  body  of  formulated  rules  that  the 

2  Croce,  Aesthetic,  ch.  i.  Cf.  A.  C.  Bradley,  Poetry  for  Poetry’s 
Sake. 


INTUITION 


97 


professional  conscience  is  concerned.  If  you  were  to 
ask  a  doctor  to  write  out  all  the  professional  rules 
which  he  found  inscribed  upon  his  conscience  he  could 
not  do  so,  for  the  good  reason  that  they  are  not  in¬ 
scribed  there.  On  the  other  hand,  you  can  be  sure  that 
when  a  relatively  novel  problem  of  conduct  arose  in  his 
practice  his  conscience  would  come  to  his  aid  in  help¬ 
ing  him  to  choose  among  the  various  solutions  which 
might  occur  to  him.  His  conscience,  then,  since  it  is 
thus  obviously  selective,  represents  a  kind  of  innate 
positive  knowledge.  This  knowledge  is  not  articulated 
in  the  form  of  definite  principles  of  conduct :  it  exists 
in  a  more  or  less  vague  apprehension  of  what  the  ideal 
doctor  is  like,  an  ideal  which  becomes  more  precise  in 
outline  and  in  detail  as  it  defines  itself  through  contact 
with  the  data  of  experience.  The  conception  of  the  ideal 
doctor  is  thus  built  up  by  a  process  in  which  we  start, 
not  with  the  separate  parts  of  that  ideal,  but  with  the 
whole,  and  go  on  to  clarify  and  elaborate  that  original 
datum. 

Before  going  on  it  may  be  well  to  sum  up  the  char¬ 
acteristics  of  total-working  as  it  appears  in  these 
examples. 

(i)  In  it  the  mind  apprehends  the  whole.  It  is 
synoptic.  It  is  intuitive,  not  analytic;  noetic,  not  dis¬ 
cursive.  It  is  not  a  process  of  attaching  predicates  to  a 
subject  but  it  is  a  knowledge  of  the  subject  of  predi¬ 
cates.  (2)  The  knowledge  it  confers  is  inarticulate  in 
the  sense  that  it  cannot  readily  be  translated  into  con¬ 
ceptual  terms.  (3)  Yet  this  knowledge  is  destined  to 
become  articulate,  for  although  total-working  and 


98 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


part-working  are  distinguishable  they  are  not  incom¬ 
patible.  Each  needs  the  other  to  correct  and  complete 
it.  (4)  Even  when  inarticulate  it  is  positive,  for  it  is 
the  fruitful  source  of  negations  and  exclusions.  The 
poet,  the  doctor,  the  searcher  for  a  forgotten  word  in 
our  examples  has  each  a  strong  enough  grasp  upon  his 
meaning  to  be  able  to  say  what  he  does  not  want.  This 
is  one  of  the  reasons  why  it  is  natural  to  deny  the  very 
existence  of  whole-knowledge :  it  looks  like  mere  nega¬ 
tion  and  emptiness.  Yet  negation  may  be  other  than 
‘mere’ — it  may  be  a  symptom  of  a  hold  upon  that  with 
which  one  denies.  But  it  is  easy  to  confuse  the  two,  just 
as  it  is  easy  to  confuse  that  love  of  country  which  may 
lead  one  to  hate  the  enemy  with  the  belligerent  pa¬ 
triotism  which  is  nothing  but  a  hatred  of  the  enemy. 

The  theory  we  are  adopting  then  is  this:  Knowing 
an  object  is  a  process  in  which  two  factors  or  move¬ 
ments  of  the  mind  are  concerned — total-working  and 
part-working.  These  movements  are  mutually  supple¬ 
mentary  and  knowledge  is  the  fruit  of  a  harmonious 
alliance  between  them.  We  are  required  to  think  of  the 
mind  not  as  something  immoveable,  like  a  mirror,  and 
of  knowledge  as  a  sort  of  simple  staring,  but  of  the 
mind  as  moving  and  growing  and  of  knowledge  as  an 
assimilation  brought  about  by  this  alternating  move¬ 
ment.  Total-working  affects  part- working  not  only  in 
the  beginning  by  predetermining  the  limits  within 
which  part-working  is  to  operate,  but  continuously  by 
leading  to  the  discovery  (mainly,  as  we  have  seen,  by 
the  method  of  exclusion  of  predicates)  of  new  parts 
and  by  promoting  a  rearrangement  of  the  system  of 


INTUITION 


99 


articulate  knowledge  at  any  moment  achieved.  Part¬ 
working,  in  turn,  affects  total-working.  The  whole  is 
defined  as  the  whole  of  these  parts.  That  is  the  element 
in  its  meaning  not  subject  to  revision.  But  just  because 
of  this  identity  of  meaning  the  character  of  the  whole 
becomes  more  definite  in  so  far  as  we  succeed  in  relat¬ 
ing  the  parts  and  interpreting  them  by  each  other. 

In  describing  this  harmonious  interplay  of  func¬ 
tions  we  are  obviously  describing  an  ideal  situation.  In 
actual  experience  the  balance  is  not  maintained.  We  be¬ 
come  fascinated  by  part-working,  the  whole  eludes  us, 
and  this  disturbs  the  health  of  the  mind  and  proves  our 
undoing.  It  is  not  without  justice  that  the  plain  man 
regards  philosophy  as  an  almost  wilful  obscuring  of 
God’s  truth.  And  the  ‘once-born’  can  say,  “Here  is  the 
world,  sound  as  a  nut,  perfect,  not  the  smallest  piece 
of  chaos  left,  never  a  stitch  nor  an  end ;  not  a  mark  of 
haste,  or  botching,  or  second  thought;  but  the  theory 
of  the  world  is  a  thing  of  shreds  and  patches.”3  We 
know  that  the  multiplication  of  knowledge  is  not  fa¬ 
vourable  to  that  power  of  simple  regard  which  we  call 
wisdom,  that  the  scholar  who  is  stuffed  with  informa¬ 
tion  and  equipped  with  every  technical  weapon  too 
often  loses  all  capacity  save  that  of  making  a  fresh 
distinction,  that  a  man  may  carry  such  a  burden  of 
theology  upon  his  back  that  he  cannot  lift  up  his  eyes 
to  heaven. 

The  other  side  of  this  is  the  familiar  judgment,  mys¬ 
tical  in  quality,  that  the  attempt  to  translate  any  sig- 


3  Emerson,  Plato. 


IOO 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


nificant  experience  into  ideas  and  language  always 
falsifies  and  impoverishes  it.  This  judgment  is  neither 
just  nor  wise,  implying,  as  it  does,  that  true  knowl¬ 
edge  ends  in  silence.  Any  achievement  in  expression  is 
always  so  much  sheer  gain.  It  would  be  fairer  to  say 
that  expression  omits  elements  of  the  original,  thus 
leaving  open  the  possibility  that  the  omission  in  time 
may  be  made  good. 

Yet  it  remains  true  that  too  much  absorption  in  the 
business  of  establishing  relations  between  the  parts 
generates  a  poison  which  brings  the  work  of  under¬ 
standing  to  a  stop.  The  corrective  lies  in  a  deliberate 
effort  to  recover  the  whole,  to  give  total-working  its 
due. 

Let  us  suppose  that  this  effort  has  been  successful 
and  has  led  to  the  desired  intuition:  how  are  we  to 
describe  that  intuition?  There  are  two  kinds  of  intui¬ 
tive  experience  with  which  it  is  not  to  be  confused.  ( i ) 
Perception.  A  chess-player,  about  to  make  his  move, 
perceives  the  state  of  the  game.  “Before  making  this 
move  I  had  to  plough  through  a  mass  of  combinations 
which  totalled  at  least  one  hundred  moves.  The  text 
combination  is  one  of  them,  and  I  had  to  see  through 
the  whole  thing  to  the  end  before  I  decided  on  this 
move.”4  This  is  a  synoptic  vision  of  a  complex  system 
of  terms  and  relations:  the  situation  is  seen  as  an  in¬ 
tegrated  whole  of  parts.  The  player’s  move  is  a  re¬ 
sponse  to  that  situation ;  it  is  an  application  of  his  idea. 
Further,  the  sensory  element  is  present  here.  (2)  In 

4  Capablanca,  My  Chess  Career,  p.  138. 


INTUITION 


IOI 


the  second  type  the  sensory  element  is  absent.  An  ex¬ 
ample  is  when  one  grasps  a  mathematical  demonstra¬ 
tion  as  a  whole.  Here  again  there  is  a  complete  syn¬ 
thesis:  one  sees  the  mutual  implication  of  whole  and 
parts.  It  is  what  may  be  called  a  post-analytical  in¬ 
tuition,  since  it  takes  up  into  itself  the  results  of 
analysis.  The  intuition  I  have  in  mind,  the  essentially 
mystical  intuition,  differs  from  both  the  preceding. 
It  is  the  experience  in  which  the  solving  idea  ‘dawns 
on’  one,  in  which  one  discerns  the  clue,  in  which  one 
recovers  the  forgotten  subject  of  one’s  predicates.  One 
has  not  yet  begun  to  apply  the  idea,  still  less  has  one 
completed  the  application  as  in  the  case  of  the  synoptic 
or  the  integrative  intuition.  The  clue  has  a  relative  in¬ 
dependence;  it  is  now,  temporarily,  a  datum  among 
data — the  word  become  flesh;  but  it  does  not  have 
complete  independence  (for  then  it  would  be  meaning¬ 
less)  ;  it  is  known  and  identifiable  as  the  clue  to  these 
data,  the  subject  of  these  predicates. 

As  for  the  psychological  marks  of  this  experience — 
it  seems  wholly  natural  to  express  the  discovery  ex¬ 
citedly,  as  something  teeming  with  importance  and 
consequences,  for  the  time  being  more  or  less  inex¬ 
pressible,  for  knowledge.  For  what  one  has  seen  is  that 
all  one’s  data  will  have  to  be  overhauled  and  reinter¬ 
preted  and  placed  in  accordance  with  the  new  idea: 
not  one  of  them  will  remain  unaffected.  This  intuitive 
knowledge  is  prophetic  in  the  sense  that  though  one 
possesses  the  idea  yet  that  knowledge  has  to  be  built 
in  with  the  rest  of  one’s  knowledge ;  it  has  to  be  estab¬ 
lished.  But  it  can  only  be  established  by  making  con- 


102 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


nections  with  the  existing  system  of  ideas.  The  ancient 
paradox  here  makes  its  appearance  in  an  unlikely 
place,  for  this  is  a  kind  of  knowledge  which  can  only 
be  saved  by  being  lost :  one  must  be  willing  to  surrender 
it  in  order  to  retain  it. 

This  third  type  of  intuition,  we  maintain,  is  the 
mystical  type.  I  f  we  are  right,  then  we  are  in  a  position 
to  see  how  all  growth  in  understanding  involves  the 
use  of  a  mystical  factor.  And  it  follows  that  the  mystics 
are  perfectly  justified  in  claiming  that  their  experience 
is  noetic,  but  that  they  are  mistaken  in  postulating 
some  special  organ  of  religious  knowledge.  As  far  as  its 
form  goes,  intuition  is  a  familiar,  if  too  little  noticed, 
faculty.  Furthermore,  we  can  now  interpret  that  baf¬ 
fling  combination  of  apparent  speechlessness  and  explo¬ 
sive  denials  with  a  copious  outpouring  of  explanation, 
analysis,  and  dogma.  This  in  turn  enables  us  to  con¬ 
front  the  mystics’  frequent  (and  mistaken)  opposition 
between  discursive  knowledge  and  intuition  with  the 
obvious  implications  of  their  practice.  For  mysticism  as 
we  now  regard  it  is  not  the  enemy  but  the  inevitable 
ally  of  philosophy. 

I  will  try  to  explain  more  fully  the  meaning  of  this 
interpretation  by  considering  its  bearing  upon  two 
issues  which  mysticism  constantly  provokes. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


INTUITION  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

IT  is  sometimes  said  that  there  is  something  mani¬ 
festly  incredible,  because  intolerably  arrogant,  in 
the  mystics’  claim  to  have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of 
the  total  world-object.  But  I  doubt  whether  the  ob¬ 
jection  can  be  sustained  either  by  logic  or  by  experi¬ 
ence.  Not  by  logic,  for  in  principle  there  is  no  more 
arrogance  in  the  claim  to  possess  an  intuitive  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  universe  than  there  is  in  the  claim  to  know 
in  advance  the  whole  of  the  simplest  object  of  percep¬ 
tion.  An  exhaustive  knowledge  about  the  pen  with 
which  I  now  write  is  a  task  which  would  require  the 
labours  of  physicist  and  chemist  (to  mention  only 
these)  until  the  end  of  time.  Yet  if  I  should  be  able  to 
inherit  the  fruits  of  their  labours  my  knowledge  would 
still  be  knowledge  of  this  pen  as  I  now  simply  perceive 
it  in  its  wholeness.  The  point  I  am  making  has  been 
put  with  great  force  and  clearness  by  Professor  Shel¬ 
don.  “The  completed  infinite,”  he  writes,  “is  not  con¬ 
tradictory  at  all,  if  once  we  grant  that  sameness  and 
difference  do  not  belie  each  other.  The  sameness  runs 
undiminished  through  all  the  infinite  list  of  qualities, 
whatever  their  differences.  The  apple  is  red ;  it  is  bright 
red  and  pleasing;  it  is  bright  red  and  pleasing  and 
some  other  quality;  and  so  on.  What  then  do  we  mean 
by  saying  that  it  is  complete  while  all  its  qualities  are 


104 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


so  many  they  can  never  be  complete  ?  Simply  that  every 
added  quality,  is  of  the  same  old  apple;  is  it,  in  truth, 
while  yet  the  number  of  novelties  overlaying  the  same¬ 
ness  is  endless.  The  completeness  signifies  the  fact 
that  the  sameness  remains  undestroyed;  the  incom¬ 
pleteness,  that  ever  new  and  positive  differences  may 
be  added.  The  series  is  complete  at  every  stage,  for 
every  novelty  is  a  predicate  of — identified  with — the 
original  datum,  the  red  apple.  It  is  incomplete  at  every 
stage  in  the  sense  that  no  amount  of  identity  precludes 
an  additional  difference  which  we  proceed  to  discover. 
But  for  that  very  reason  the  incompleteness  does  not 
give  the  lie  to  completeness.  It  seems  to  do  so  only  be¬ 
cause  it  suggests  to  our  minds  that  always  some  quali¬ 
ties  of  the  apple,  being  different  from  all  yet  enumer¬ 
ated,  are  left  out — as  if  they  could  not  be  there.  But 
when  we  remember  that  they  are  sure  to  be  identified 
with,  as  predicates  of,  the  datum  we  started  with,  we 
can  see  that  they  are  not  left  out.  That  datum  already 
includes  them.  Their  incompleteness,  in  short,  does 
not  mean  that  they  are  not  all  there,  but  that  being 
there  they  generate,  as  it  were,  ever  new  aspects  of  the 
said  object.  And  these  new  aspects,  again,  however 
many  and  divergent,  are  always  to  be  identified  with 
the  original  datum.  There  is  then  a  question-begging 
character  in  the  word  incompleteness ;  it  is  uncon¬ 
sciously  assumed  to  connote  that  some  terms  of  the 
series  are  never  reached.  But  they  are  all  reached;  only 
when  reached  they  at  once  reveal  a  novel  element,  a 
diversity  which  enlarges  the  already  completed 


INTUITION  AND  PHILOSOPHY 


105 


thing.”1  From  this  point  of  view,  then,  the  mystic  who 
anticipates  the  goal  of  all  philosophy  does  no  more 
than  assert  that  philosophy’s  task  of  interpretation,  in¬ 
finite  though  it  be,  is  now  and  for  ever  one  identical 
task,  defined  by  a  permanent  hold  upon  that  which  is 
to  be  interpreted. 

Nor  can  I  see  any  force  in  the  alleged  empirical  ob¬ 
jection  that  ‘the  universe,’  The  whole  scheme  of  things,’ 
is  but  a  vague  name  for  lack  of  knowledge  or  of  in¬ 
terest,  that  no  one  is  concerned  with  the  universe.  On 
the  contrary,  every  man  consciously  or  unconsciously 
is  concerned  with  it,  and  his  concern  is  manifested  in 
whatever  discernible  personality  or  temperament  he 
may  have.  What  is  the  ultimate  determinant  of  the 
confident  bearing  or  the  timid,  of  heroism  or  acqui¬ 
escence,  of  ‘matter-of-factness,’  melancholy  or  pla¬ 
cidity,  but  the  individual’s  native  sense  of  the  kind  of 
world-situation  that  he  confronts,  a  sense  by  which  he 
reads  his  own  experience  as  so  much  revelation  of  That 
with  which  ultimately  he  has  to  deal?  Every  man  is 
certainly  capable  of  some  total  reaction,  as  James 
called  it,  though  it  may  well  take  some  crisis  of 
tragedy,  bereavement  or  peril  to  elicit  it  and  arouse 
him  from  the  comfortable  securities  of  conventional 
living  that  encourage  the  taking  of  all  things  for 
granted.  And  the  same  thing  appears  when  we  turn 
from  individual  experience  to  the  collective  experience 
of  men  as  it  is  organised  in  the  different  departments 
of  knowledge.  If  for  the  moment  we  may  say  that  re- 

1  W.  H.  Sheldon,  Strife  of  Systems  and  Productive  Duality,  pp. 
462-463. 


IO 6  A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 

ligion  expresses  man’s  total  reaction  it  is  a  mere  com¬ 
monplace  to  remark  that  religion  cannot  and  does  not 
remain  unaffected  by  progress  in  science  or  morals  or 
politics.  If  certain  conceptions  of  God,  such  as  despot 
or  warrior  or  miracle-worker,  have  now  become  im¬ 
possible  to  the  mind  of  our  time,  that  is  testimony  to 
the  fact  that  the  idea  of  God  is  continually  involved  in 
these  enterprises  and  reflects  our  progress.  The  fact 
that  our  total  world-object  is  continually  present  to 
our  minds  may  be  what  makes  it  inconspicuous ;  it  can 
hardly  be  a  reason  for  denying  that  it  is  at  work. 

I  pass  to  the  other  issue  with  which  our  interpreta¬ 
tion  has  to  reckon.  The  mystics  are  certain  that  they 
have  seen  God  and  that  thereafter  they  can  discern  his 
presence,  his  ‘vestigia,’  in  all  things.  Yet  they  have 
been  certain  of  much  that  is  false  and  of  much  that  is 
doubtful.  This  would  seem  to  dispose  of  their  claims 
to  be  trustworthy.  Their  revelation  cannot  be  authori¬ 
tative.  Yet  a  little  reflection  shows  that  this  judgment 
is  superficial.  If  it  seems  at  all  plausible  it  is  because 
our  thought  is  shaped  by  two  assumptions:  first,  that 
certainty  is  what  is  reached  only  at  the  end  of  a  process 
of  reasoning;  second,  that  certainty  is  not  compatible 
with  error. 

The  first  of  these  has  received  a  kind  of  philosophi¬ 
cal  sanctification  in  a  familiar  theory  of  truth.  Truth, 
we  are  told,  is  coherence.  There  are  no  axioms,  no  self- 
evident  truths,  such  as  Aristotle  and  Descartes  be¬ 
lieved  in,  from  which  all  other  truths  may  be  sus¬ 
pended,  chain-wise.  Truth  is  a  self-supporting  system 
in  which  all  particular  truths  get  their  character  from 


INTUITION  AND  PHILOSOPHY 


107 


their  interconnection  with  the  other  components  of  the 
system.  The  image  invoked  is  not  now  the  chain  but 
the  arch  or  the  solar  system.  This  theory  is  the  aca¬ 
demic  apotheosis  of  the  familiar  notion  that  all  cer¬ 
tainty  is  demonstrative  certainty,  for,  according  to 
this  doctrine,  all  certainties  are  provisional  (and  there¬ 
fore  not  genuine  certainties  at  all).  There  is  only  one 
certainty  or  self-evident  truth  and  that  is  inaccessible. 

The  theory  is  built  on  the  same  principle  as  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  unmodified  altruism  and  as  the  practical 
maxim  never  to  act  until  the  evidence  is  all  in.  It  is 
exposed  to  the  same  kind  of  objection  as  these.  If  the 
good  of  A  consists  in  working  for  the  good  of  B  and 
the  good  of  B  in  working  for  the  good  of  C,  the  good 
is  never  defined  in  concrete  terms.  Again,  to  tell  me 
not  to  act  in  advance  of  complete  evidence  is  to  con¬ 
demn  me  to  passivity.  Similarly,  if  every  particular 
certainty  shines  by  a  reflected  light  no  one  of  them  has 
a  proper  light  of  its  own.2  We  can  find  no  source  of 
illumination :  the  self-supporting  system  of  truths 
turns  out  to  be  a  system  of  nothings.  In  other  words, 
all  certainty  cannot  be  derivative;  a  system  of  truth 
cannot  be  generated  out  of  a  set  of  tentative  assertions 
or  mental  reservations.  It  must  be  possible  to  be  cer¬ 
tain  in  advance  of  criticism  and  reflection.  In  the  be¬ 
ginning  was  the  datum.  The  task  of  criticism  and  re¬ 
flection  is  to  examine  and  try  to  harmonise  the  data. 

Now  of  course  it  did  not  need  this  disquisition  to 
establish  the  fact  that  men  are  prematurely  certain  and 
often  certain  of  things  that  are  not  so,  but  the  real 

2  Cf.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  §  86. 


io8  A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 

question  is  how  far  they  are  justified  in  this  premature 
certainty.  Should  we  not,  as  truth  seekers,  resist  this 
natural  tendency?  The  answer  has  already  been  sug¬ 
gested.  We  should  never  get  any  truth  at  all  if  we  tried 
to  eliminate  all  possibility  of  error  at  the  outset ;  such 
complete  rational  detachment  is  to  be  secured  only  by 
ceasing  to  live.  The  attitude  of  waiting  for  corrobora¬ 
tion,  while  it  has  its  function,  can  never  be  the  only 
valid  attitude.  Our  danger  lies  not  in  committing  our¬ 
selves  to  certainty  with  the  inevitable  risk  of  error,  but 
in  refusing  to  bring  our  several  certainties  together  so 
that  they  may  suffer  mutual  correction  or  enjoy  mutual 
reinforcement. 

This  is  the  point  at  which  the  second  assumption 
may  enter  and  cause  difficulty:  error  seems  to  cancel 
certainty.  If  the  deliverance  of  one  moment  is  contra¬ 
dicted  by  later  experience  it  looks  as  though  the  con¬ 
tent  of  the  first  moment  had  been  wholly  discredited. 
Yet  if  I  say,  for  example,  T  hear  the  train  coming’  and 
later  say,  Tt  was  not  the  train,’  the  second  judgment 
does  not  obliterate  the  first;  whatever  the  noise  may 
prove  to  have  been  there  will  be  some  element  in  the 
later  interpretation  which  was  contributed  by  the 
original  experience  described  (erroneously)  as  hearing 
the  train  coming;  the  whole  meaning  of  the  original 
cannot  be  retrospectively  imported  into  it  by  some 
Hegelian  thaumaturgy.  Later  insight  may  refine  upon, 
it  cannot  wholly  abolish,  the  original  certainty,  nor 
can  it  wholly  create  the  final  certainty. 

Thus  the  mistakes  and  the  exaggerations  of  mystic 
utterances,  together  with  the  conflicts  between  them, 


INTUITION  AND  PHILOSOPHY  109 

need  not  wholly  impair  their  truth.  The  mystic  seeks 
the  one  God,  the  Substance  of  things,  and  says  that  he 
has  found  Him.  He  has  a  right  to  his  certainty. 

The  fact  that  he  has  found  other  things  besides,  that 
he  has  claimed  to  know  too  much,  does  not  rule  him 
out  as  an  untrustworthy  witness.  When  the  work  of 
criticism  has  been  completed  whatever  permanent 
knowledge  about  God  emerges  will  be  all  of  a  piece 
with  mystical  revelation.  That  is  why  those  who  are 
not  mystics  must  take  mysticism  seriously.  The  phi¬ 
losopher  who  refuses  to  consider  what  mysticism  has 
to  say  about  the  universe  is  like  a  man  who  should 
avoid  all  food  that  was  not  food  and  nothing  but  food. 

Mysticism  is  a  perpetual  return  to  the  vision  of  God, 
to  the  original  datum,  a  return  therefore  to  the  old; 
but  to  the  old  not  as  an  exhausted  but  as  an  inexhaust¬ 
ible  datum  from  which  may  be  drawn  out  new  sugges¬ 
tions,  new  dogmas — not  in  the  form  of  pure  metal  but 
in  the  form  of  ore. 

And  in  the  final  appraisal  I  am  willing  to  stand 
by  this  figure.  It  would  be  foolish  for  either  the  re¬ 
finer  or  the  miner  to  take  exclusive  credit  for  the  final 
product.  The  work  of  neither  is  complete  without  that 
of  the  other.  If  by  claiming  universal  authority  for  the 
mystical  revelation  we  mean  that  mysticism  can  dis¬ 
pense  with  philosophy,  then  the  claim  is  insupportable. 
There  are  mystics  who  have  set  up  a  radical  opposition 
between  the  religious  intuition  and  the  discursive 
reason  (although  even  here,  as  we  have  seen,  their  prac¬ 
tice  has  conflicted  with  their  theory),  contending  that 
the  former  was  a  sufficient  means  to  religious  truth. 


I  IO 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


They  are  wrong.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  phi¬ 
losophers  who  have  been  just  as  exorbitant  in  their 
estimate  of  the  power  of  the  dialectic,  and  they  also 
are  wrong.  Wisdom  lies  not  in  choosing  either  mysti¬ 
cism  or  philosophy  but  in  choosing  both.  Philosophy 
is  the  articulation  and  completion  of  mysticism,  but 
mysticism,  in  turn,  is  needed  in  order  to  complete  by 
correction  and  supplementation  the  work  of  philoso¬ 
phy.  And  this  is  a  perpetual  process.  For  if  it  is  the 
destiny  of  mysticism  to  lose  its  life  in  philosophy,  it  is 
the  destiny  of  philosophy  to  recover  its  hold  upon  its 
object  by  renewal  of  the  mystic  vision.  Of  each  we  can 
say,  He  was  himself  the  slayer  and  shall  himself  be 
slain.  The  life-in-death  and  death-in-life  of  these  two 
movements  constitute  the  metabolism  of  the  mind. 

One  thing  remains  to  be  added.  In  the  beginning 
was  the  ore.  Mysticism  seems  to  me  to  have  priority 
in  this  relationship.  It  is  not  only  the  completion  of 
philosophy ;  it  is  its  presupposition.  Reason  may  estab¬ 
lish  our  certainties :  it  does  not  initiate  them.  The  task 
of  philosophy  might  be  defined  as  the  problem  of  show¬ 
ing  how  reality  and  appearance  belong  together.  Phi¬ 
losophy  therefore  begins  with  a  distinction  which  it 
did  not  create,  with  a  problem:  “Things  are  not  what 
they  seem.  How  can  this  be?”  It  is  religion,  with  its 
vague  and  awful  contrast  between  the  sacred  and  the 
secular,  between  the  familiar  and  the  unfamiliar,  that 
generated  and  still  keeps  alive  the  problem.  Yet  reli¬ 
gion  could  hardly  have  condemned  the  appearances 
without  a  hold  upon  that  positive  reality  which  ex¬ 
posed  their  incompleteness.  It  is  this  mystical  knowl- 


INTUITION  AND  PHILOSOPHY  hi 

edge  that  sets  going  the  rumble  of  the  distant  drum, 
and  philosophy  is  part  of  man’s  attempt  to  quell  the 
restlessness  that  ensues.  This  is  the  sense  in  which 
mysticism  lies  at  the  beginning  of  philosophy  as  it 
lies  also  at  its  end. 


I 


PART  III 

RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  PROBLEM 

THE  great  problem  of  philosophy,  we  are  some¬ 
times  told,  is  to  reconcile  religion  and  morality, 
or,  more  precisely,  to  establish  harmony  between  the 
certainties  of  religious  experience  and  the  postulates 
of  the  moral  life.  We  accept  this  statement  as  provid¬ 
ing  us  with  a  vantage  ground  from  which  to  bring  into 
relief  the  relations  between  mysticism  and  conduct. 
We  need  only  remember  that  morality  and  religion 
here  bear  somewhat  special  meanings  which  give  em¬ 
phasis  to  the  opposition  between  them. 

Let  us  begin  with  a  statement  of  the  antithesis  in 
its  most  striking  form.  “The  main  difference  is  that 
what  in  morality  only  is  to  be,  in  religion  somewhere 
and  somehow  really  is  and  what  we  are  to  do  is  done. 
Whether  it  is  thought  of  as  what  is  done  now,  or  what 
will  be  done  hereafter,  makes  in  this  respect  no  prac¬ 
tical  difference.  They  are  different  ways  of  looking  at 
the  same  thing;  and,  whether  present  or  future,  the 
reality  is  equally  certain.  The  importance  for  practice 
of  this  religious  point  of  view  is  that  what  is  to  be  done 
is  approached,  not  with  the  knowledge  of  a  doubtful 
success,  but  with  the  perfect  certainty  of  already  ac¬ 
complished  victory.”1 

1 F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  pp.  297-298.  For  a  similar 
position  see  A.  E.  Taylor,  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  pp.  391-392, 
and  Bosanquet,  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  238-239, 
242-246.  For  a  comment  upon  the  implications  of  such  an  expression 
as  “already  accomplished  victory”  see  Bosanquet,  op.  cit.,  p.  326. 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


1 1 6 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  any  theoretical  recon¬ 
ciliation  between  the  claims  of  religion  and  morality 
as  thus  formulated  are  too  obvious  to  need  the  helpful 
indicative  finger.  It  will  be  more  to  the  purpose  to 
make  a  rapid  survey  of  some  representative  solutions. 

(i)  In  the  interests  of  morality  one  may  deny  that 
religion  commits  us  to  any  such  assertion.  “It  does  not 
matter,”  the  objector  may  be  supposed  to  continue, 
“whether  we  say  that  the  victory  of  our  highest  ideals 
is  already  accomplished,  or  already  assured,  or  em¬ 
bodied  in  eternity  or  in  the  Absolute — the  practical 
consequences  are  the  same  in  each  case.  The  moral 
struggle  becomes  at  worst  illusory  and  at  best  histri¬ 
onic.  Duty  is  seen  to  be  merely  misplaced  finite  em¬ 
phasis,  and  the  feeling  that  the  issues  of  human  con¬ 
duct  are  critical  for  the  fate  of  the  universe  as  well 
as  for  our  own  characters  contains  no  true  report.  We 
may  feel  as  though  the  universe  were  the  theatre  of  a 
doubtful  struggle  between  the  forces  of  good  and  evil 
in  which  we  are  called  upon  to  take  part,  but  this,  we 
shall  be  told,  is  to  construe  the  universe  from  the  point 
of  view  of  ‘mere  morality’  and  in  religion  we  transcend 
that  point  of  view.  But  the  price  of  this  transcending 
is  that  our  moral  values  become  discredited  and  our 
choices  morally  indifferent.  Our  freedom,  and  with  it 
our  self-respect,  vanishes.  The  strenuous  mood  in  us 
collapses  and  we  grow  enervated  in  a  climate  of  cosmic 
security.  The  remedy  is  to  restore  the  practical  will  to 
its  primacy  and,  taking  our  stand  upon  its  deliver¬ 
ances,  to  declare  for  a  finite  God  who  needs  our  help 


THE  PROBLEM 


1 1 7 


in  the  struggle  against  evil,  for  a  growing  universe 
and  for  open  futures.” 

But  this  last  doctrine,  as  usually  presented,  goes  to 
the  opposite  extreme  from  the  theory  which  it  rejects. 
Dissatisfied  with  the  thought  of  ultimate  security,  its 
exponents  give  us  a  philosophy  of  ultimate  risk.  Mo¬ 
rality,  to  say  nothing  of  religion,  cannot  be  content 
with  that.  An  experiment  which  is  not  subject  to  fixed 
conditions  is  no  experiment,  a  conflict  in  which  there 
are  no  rules  is  no  conflict.  There  must  somewhere  be  a 
point  of  certainty.  A  growing  universe  may  provide 
for  open  futures,  but  whoso  declares  that  the  universe 
is  growing  states  an  unalterable  fact  about  its  struc¬ 
ture,  which  fact  is  the  eternal  guarantee  of  the  possi¬ 
bility  and  validity  of  experiment. 

(2)  Another  solution  starts  from  the  admitted  fact 
that  your  genuine  religious  optimist,  who  is  confident 
of  the  ultimate  victory  of  the  good  and  perhaps  even  of 
his  own  salvation,  does  not  exploit  these  certainties  on 
his  own  behalf  by  regarding  them  as  a  justification  for 
a  policy  of  laissez  faire.  On  the  contrary,  his  optimism 
seems  to  increase  his  moral  energy.  Shall  we  not  there¬ 
fore  say  that  there  is  something  paradoxical  and  in¬ 
consistent  about  the  religious  consciousness?  “I  do  not 
think, ”  writes  Professor  Taylor,  “we  need  shrink  from 
the  conclusion  that  practical  religion  involves  a  certain 
element  of  intellectual  contradiction.  Thus,  though 
God  is  not  truly  God  until  we  deny  the  existence  of  any 
independent  ‘evil’  by  which  His  nature  is  limited, 
it  seems  probable  that  the  thought  of  ourselves  as  ‘fel¬ 
low-workers  with  God’  would  hardly  lead  to  practical 


1 18 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


good  works  unless  we  also  inconsistently  allowed  our¬ 
selves  to  imagine  God  as  struggling  against  a  hostile 
power  and  standing  in  need  of  our  assistance.  But  this 
only  shows  that  the  practical  value  of  religion  in  guid¬ 
ing  action  is  not  necessarily  dependent  upon  its  sci¬ 
entific  truth/’2  To  the  same  effect  is  the  statement  of 
Bosanquet.  “The  conclusion  is,  in  a  word,  that  the  God 
of  religion,  inherent  in  the  completest  experience,  is  an 
appearance  of  reality,  as  distinct  from  being  the  whole 
and  ultimate  reality;  a  rank  which  religion  cannot 
consistently  claim  for  the  Supreme  Being  as  it  must 
conceive  him.”3 

A  theory  of  this  kind  has  two  possible  meanings. 
Either  it  involves  a  frank  recognition  of  the  contradic¬ 
tion  in  practical  religion — in  which  event  the  problem 
is  restated,  not  solved ;  or  it  amounts  to  saying  that  the 
nearer  our  religion  comes  to  being  philosophically  true 
the  less  effect  it  should  have  upon  conduct.  As  phi¬ 
losophers,  we  try  to  see  things  sub  specie  eternitatis,  but 
from  this  point  of  view  moral  effort  becomes  make-be¬ 
lieve  and  God  is  reduced  to  an  inadequate  symbol  of 
the  Absolute. 

The  theory  in  this  form  can  only  be  met  by  a  criti¬ 
cism  of  the  concept  of  the  Absolute  upon  which  it  rests, 
but  as  an  indirect  and  general  comment  one  may  re¬ 
mark  that  no  reasonable  man  would  remain  in  this 
position  if  he  could  see  any  honourable  way  out  of  it. 
Such  an  antagonism  between  philosophy  and  religion 
or  philosophy  and  morality  is  in  the  long  run  in- 

2  A.  E.  Taylor,  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  p.  399. 

3  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  255-256. 


THE  PROBLEM 


1 19 

tolerable.  It  is  an  affront  to  all  good  sense  to  require 
>that  in  setting  about  the  pursuit  of  our  ideals  we  shall 
not  only  forget  but  discard  our  philosophical  insight; 
while  philosophy  can  hardly  gain  from  inflicting  upon 
us  the  malady  of  a  double  personality  from  whose  tor¬ 
ments  we  can  escape  only  by  hypnotising  ourselves  into 
a  speculative  trance  or  into  a  religious  somnambulism. 

(3)  A  third  type  of  solution  has  been  concisely  ex¬ 
pressed  by  Professor  Royce.  “The  only  way  whereby 
God  can  be  in  his  heaven,  or  all  right  with  the  world, 
is  the  way  that  essentially  includes  the  doing  of  strenu¬ 
ous  deeds  by  righteous  men.”4 

I  f  we  are  to  take  this  statement  literally  then  it  fol¬ 
lows  that  God’s  triumph  is  now  conditional  upon  my 
effort.  At  a  given  moment,  whether  He  is  to  remain  in 
His  heaven  or  not  depends  upon  my  choice.  But  a  con¬ 
ditional  triumph  is  an  expression  applicable  not  to  the 
Absolute  but  to  a  finite  God,  and  we  are  confronted 
with  the  difficulties  in  that  idea.  If  we  are  not  to  take 
it  literally,  but  in  the  sense  of  some  eternal  triumph, 
then  the  persistent  question  of  the  pragmatist  recurs: 
How  does  this  philosophy  help  me  to  choose  my  course 
when  I  am  confronted  with  a  particular  issue  at  a  given 
moment?  Whatever  I  do,  the  Absolute — how  am  I  to 

4  The  Sources  of  Religious  Insight,  p.  177.  For  a  similar  ex¬ 
pression  cf.  the  following  from  A.  E.  Taylor.  “In  that  perfect  whole 
our  moral  ideals  and  moral  effort,  as  finite  beings  belonging  to  the 
temporal  order,  are  of  course  included  with  everything  else,  and  its 
perfection  is  therefore  no  ground  for  treating  them  as  nugatory. 
Our  own  moral  struggle  with  the  apparent  evil  of  the  time  series 
is  itself  an  integral  part  of  the  reality  which,  in  its  complete  in¬ 
dividual  character,  is  already  perfect,  if  we  could  but  win  to  a  point 
of  view  from  which  to  behold  it  as  it  is.”  Op.  cit.,  p.  398. 


120 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


put  it? — will  include,  already  includes,  will  have  in¬ 
cluded? — my  deed.  If  I  choose  wrong,  I  know  that  my 
failure  will  somehow,  sub  specie  eternitatis,  redound  to 
the  glory  of  the  Absolute;  if  I  do  right,  my  contribu¬ 
tion  is  only  that  of  the  fly  to  the  moving  wheel.  All  that 
such  a  theory  can  do  is  to  offer  me  retrospective  conso¬ 
lation  in  the  event  of  a  mistaken  decision;  it  does  not 
help  me  when  facing  an  issue  either  to  believe  that  my 
choice  is  critical  or  to  find  out  how  I  should  choose. 
Philosophical  truth  is  once  again  proved  useless  for 
practice. 

(4)  One  more  position  with  regard  to  our  problem 
is  worth  mentioning.  Those  who  adopt  it  can  hardly  be 
said  to  offer  a  solution,  for  what  they  propose  is,  in 
effect,  if  not  in  intention,  to  substitute  morality  for  re¬ 
ligion.  In  its  popular  form  we  are  familiar  with  it 
under  the  name  of  the  religion  of  social  service.  This 
religion  directs  our  gaze  earthward  rather  than 
heavenward ;  instead  of  being  occupied  with  the  super¬ 
natural,  the  divine,  and  the  transcendent,  it  is  occupied 
with  the  finite,  the  human,  and  the  concrete.  It  has  its 
own  way,  now  sufficiently  well  known,  of  providing 
for  humility,  for  hope,  for  the  consciousness  of  union 
with  a  larger  reality  and  even  for  (vicarious)  immor¬ 
tality.  It  seeks  its  inspiration  not  in  God  but  in  the 
Sense  of  Duty,  and  its  tendency  is  everywhere  to  treat 
laborare  as  an  equivalent  for  orare . 

I  n  so  far  as  this  popular  creed  has  ever  received  any 
consistent  philosophical  elaboration  it  may  be  said  to 
have  found  it  in  Positivism.  The  Worship  of  Hu¬ 
manity  is,  of  course,  a  much  more  comprehensive  idea 


THE  PROBLEM 


1 2  I 


than  that  underlying  the  religion  of  social  service,  but 
in  both  the  emphasis  upon  moral  effort,  upon  duty  and 
upon  practical  performance  is  the  same.  It  is  this  em¬ 
phasis  which  alone  concerns  us.  One  illustration  in 
support  of  this  contention  will  suffice. 

In  matters  of  the  heart  the  expression  is  the  act.  We  love 
most  when  we  show  love.  If  Worship  be  the  visible  and  con¬ 
scious  outpouring  of  our  affection,  attachment,  self-sacri¬ 
fice,  it  is  about  us  ever  (thanks  be  to  Humanity)  in  our 
homes  and  in  our  souls,  alone,  or  in  our  families,  as  in  great 
gatherings  of  men  and  women.  All  honest  rejoicings  at  a 
marriage  and  a  birth,  all  real  mourning  at  a  funeral,  the 
visible  emotions  in  the  sacred  quiet  of  the  household,  are 
acts  of  Worship,  if  only  they  are  real,  unselfish,  spontaneous. 
Two  friends  who  rest  true  to  each  other,  every  man  who  in 
silence  and  purity  of  heart  resolves  that  somebody  or  some¬ 
thing  shall  be  the  better  for  him  ere  he  die,  every  honest 
man  who  throws  his  heart  into  his  work — all  of  these  are 
fulfilling  an  irresistible  act  of  Worship.5 

This  passage  reveals  clearly  the  tendency  to  identify 
work  with  worship,  morality  with  religion.  Whatever 
recognition  it  may  contain  of  a  legitimate  movement 
of  the  mind  away  from  practical  tasks  involves  noth¬ 
ing  more  than  a  conscious  steeling  of  our  resolution, 
a  confirming  of  ourself  in  devotion  to  Duty.  We  seem 
to  be  dealing  with  what  passes  for  the  practical  ap¬ 
plication  of  a  doctrine  of  Divine  immanence:  Hu¬ 
manity  must  be  worshipped  by  the  actual  services  of 
man  to  man. 

5  Frederic  Harrison,  The  Creed  of  a  Layman,  pp.  227-228.  I 
have  transposed  two  passages  and  made  some  trifling  omissions. 


122 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


But  this  practical  inference,  although  plausible,  is 
mistaken.  The  positivist  himself  is  forced  to  admit  a 
difference  between  Humanity  as  a  proper  object  of 
devotion  and  source  of  inspiration  and  the  human 
beings  to  whom  he  stands  bound  by  ties  of  duty.  “How 
wanting  in  breadth  and  continuity  even  is  the  ideal 
Republic,  even  our  own  contemporary  human  race!”6 
And  the  amount  of  that  difference  measures  the  dis¬ 
crepancy  between  religion  and  morality.  A  recent 
writer  has  expressed  this  criticism  with  terseness  and 
vigour. 

It  is  only  so  far  as  he  presses  the  organic  point  of  view, 
so  as  to  unite  the  Future  with  the  Present  and  the  Past  in 
one  mystical  body,  that  ideal  humanity  assumes  for  the 
Comtist  the  features  and  proportions  of  deity.  But  humanity 
in  the  idea,  humanity  with  the  light  of  the  ideal  upon  its 
upward  path  and  the  same  light  projected  upon  the  infinite 
possibilities  of  the  future — is  not  a  fact  of  the  historical 
order.  It  is  an  idea  every  whit  as  mystical  as  that  of  God. 
For  just  in  so  far  as  we  do  not  identify  humanity  with  its 
own  past  and  present,  but  endow  it  with  the  potency  of  a 
nobler  and  ampler  future,  just  so  far  do  we  take  man  and 
his  history  as  the  expression  of  a  principle  of  perfection, 
whose  presence  at  every  stage  constitutes  the  possibility  of 
advance  beyond  that  stage.7 

This  brings  out  sharply  the  familiar  paradox.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  ‘mere  morality’  Humanity  is  a 
synthesis  that  is  yet  to  be  achieved,  an  event  that  is 
still  far-off.  The  event  becomes  divine,  morality  be- 

6  Harrison,  op.  cit.,  p.  226. 

7  A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  The  Idea  of  God,  p.  157. 


THE  PROBLEM 


123 


comes  touched  by  some  religious  enthusiasm,  only 
when  the  event  is  regarded  as  in  some  sense  consum¬ 
mated.  The  good  is  at  once  made  and  in  the  making. 
But  herewith  positivism  confesses  that  morality  is  not 
a  sufficient  substitute  for  religion.8 

The  problem,  then,  as  it  emerges  from  this  survey 
of  representative  ‘solutions’  may  be  stated  thus:  How 
are  we  to  interpret  reality  so  as  to  satisfy  a  twofold 
human  demand  ?  As  finite  beings  we  want  security  and 
we  want  risk,  we  want  novelty  and  we  want  continuity, 
we  want  the  self-respect  that  comes  from  knowing  that 
our  deeds  may  be  significant  contributions  to  some  eter¬ 
nal  substance  of  good,  and  we  need  also  the  assurance 
that  there  is  some  eternal  substance  of  good  to  con¬ 
tribute  to.  Thus  we  can  see  that,  somehow,  religious 
serenity  and  moral  strenuousness  belong  together,  but 
the  nature  of  this  bond  it  is  not  easy  to  understand. 

If  the  interpretation  of  mysticism  thus  far  proposed 
is  sound  then  mysticism  should  have  some  light  to 
throw  upon  the  problem.  For  we  may  express  the  un¬ 
derlying  contention  of  mysticism  in  purely  formal 
fashion  thus:  The  One  is  doubtless  immanent  in  the 
Many.  It  does  not  follow  that  the  best  way  of  dealing 
with  the  Many  is  by  attending  to  them  directly.  In  fact 
the  contrary  is  true :  in  order  successfully  to  deal  with 
them  I  must  from  time  to  time  withdraw  attention 
from  them  and  focus  it  upon  the  One.  The  total  object, 
many-in-one,  is  to  be  grasped  through  alternate  acts  of 
attention.  To  use  the  language  of  Professor  Hocking, 
whose  theory  we  here  adopt,  “All  good  things  do 

8  See  note  at  the  end  of  this  chapter. 


124 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


doubtless  belong  together;  but  each  good  thing,  we 
recognise,  is  to  be  pursued  separately.  The  difficulty 
lies  in  inferring  from  the  parts  to  the  whole:  that  is 
to  say,  in  seeing  that  the  alternation  which  is  obviously 
necessary  as  between  one  partial  object  and  another  is 
also  necessary  as  between  all  partial  objects  and  the 
whole.  But  just  this,  I  think,  is  what  worship  means: 
that  the  whole  must  become  a  separate  object  of  pur¬ 
suit,  taking  its  turn  as  if  it  were  also  a  part,  as  if  it 
were  another  among  the  many  goods  of  practical  oc¬ 
cupation. ,>9  Mysticism  may  explain  the  necessity  for 
this  alternation  since  it  is  in  mysticism  that  we  see  the 
alternation  ‘writ  large.’ 

We  will  turn  first  to  a  study  of  the  insufficiency  of 
the  exclusively  practical  ambition  and  the  consequent 
need  for  the  movement  towards  mystical  experience. 

Note 

The  criticism  in  its  general  form  is  applicable  elsewhere.  Thus  a 
consideration  of  primitive  Buddhism  would  serve  to  bring  out  the 
same  point.  Buddhist  morality  is  permeated  with  a  sense  of  strain. 
There  is  not  only  the  active  effort  required  to  carry  out  the  prac¬ 
tical  precepts,  but  there  is  also  the  introspective  effort  of  remind¬ 
ing  oneself  that  individuality  is  an  illusion.  “Behind  the  thought 
there  is  no  thinker,  behind  the  speech  there  is  no  speaker,  behind 
the  deed  there  is  no  doer.”  The  apparent  inconsistency  in  Bud¬ 
dhism,  as  in  Taoism,  lies  in  combining  an  ideal  of  inactivity  with 
the  command  to  be  unremitting  in  following  out  the  path.  One  is 
urged  to  struggle  arduously — for  what?  To  overcome  struggle  and 
strenuosity.  Now  if,  ignoring  the  motives  that  may  have  led  to  the 
choice  of  Nirvana  as  an  ideal,  one  asks  what  it  is  that  enables  the 
Buddhist  to  hold  on  to  it,  that  is,  to  sustain  a  type  of  effort  ad¬ 
mittedly  disagreeable,  the  answer,  I  believe,  lies  in  the  more  or  less 
tacit  assumption  of  the  disciple  that  the  ultimate  forces  of  the  uni¬ 
verse,  or  rather  the  universal  flux,  are  backing  him  up.  The  law  of 

9  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  405. 


THE  PROBLEM 


125 


Karma  is  the  reflection  in  human  affairs  of  a  moral  order  of  the 
universe,  and  this  is  the  principle  of  perfection  whose  continual 
presence  guarantees  the  possibility  of  the  ultimate  attainment  of 
Nirvana.  The  strength  of  the  guarantee  was  reinforced,  I  suppose, 
by  the  conviction  that  Gautama  Buddha  had  himself  achieved 
Nirvana.  The  thing  had  been  done. 


CHAPTER  X 


MORALITY  STRENUOUS  ALL- 
TOO-STRENUOUS 

I  PRO  POSE  in  this  chapter  to  consider  three  kinds 
of  strain  which  are  normally  incident  to  the  moral 
life  and  to  point  out  how  these  seem  to  indicate  the  need 
for  a  corrective  of  the  religious  type. 

Moral  health  is  concomitant  with  absorption  in  one’s 
task.  Happiness  is  its  symptom,  and  happiness  is  a 
function  of  some  moving  equilibrium  between  our  at¬ 
tention  and  the  objects  to  which  we  attend.  To  be 
wrapped  up  in  one’s  work,  to  feel  continually  equal  to 
the  occasion,  to  be  actually  and  prophetically  master 
of  the  situation — these  are  so  many  familiar  descrip¬ 
tions  of  the  state  of  mind  to  which  we  refer.  But  absorp¬ 
tion  may  be  a  synonym  for  complacency  and  stagna¬ 
tion,  for  that  kind  of  satisfaction  in  achievement  which 
Nietzsche  had  in  mind  when  he  uttered  that  scornful 
beatitude,  “Blessed  are  the  sleepy,  for  they  shall  soon 
drop  off.”  Evidently  that  absorption  which  is  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  moral  health  presupposes  free  choice  and  an 
unimpaired  power  of  self-criticism.  In  order  to  keep  a 
sharp  focus  to  practical  attention  we  must  frequently 
adjust  it.  A  constant  scrutiny  of  ourselves  and  of  our 
level  of  attainment  is  thus  required  of  us  if  we  are  to 
guard  against  stagnation  of  the  will. 

( i )  Here  begins  the  first  type  of  strain.  For,  forced 
to  be  scrupulous,  we  go  on  to  become  over-scrupulous. 


128 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


The  inward  eye  discovers  ever  more  imperfections 
until  there  is  seen  to  be  no  health  in  us.  The  gulf 
widens  between  present  achievement  and  the  goal : 
perfection  and  health  seem  correspondingly  further  off. 
The  good  which  we  seek  retreats  to  the  confines  of  hope 
and  imagination :  it  becomes  a  Holy  Grail,  a  Heavenly 
City  out  of  sight,  a  messianic  ‘reign,’  a  Utopia,  the  ‘far 
off,  most  secret  and  inviolate  Rose.’  But  just  as  a  com¬ 
mon  catastrophe  levels  all — 

young  boys  and  girls 
Are  level  now  with  men :  the  odds  is  gone, 

And  there  is  nothing  left  remarkable 
Beneath  the  visiting  moon — 

even  so,  in  the  light  of  a  divine  event  so  remote,  the 
contributions  of  all  men  become  equally  important  and 
equally  unimportant.  Hopelessness  descends  upon  the 
moral  life.  The  ends  we  set  before  us  have  ceased  to 
convince,  the  savour  of  worth  has  evaporated  from 
them. 

Remedies  are  proposed,  various  devices  to  conceal 
from  ourselves  the  true  situation.  We  are  told,  for 
example,  that  happiness  lies,  wholly  or  in  part,  within 
ourselves ;  that  without  some  effort  of  attention  on  our 
part,  some  will-to-believe,  nothing  would  have  any 
value  for  us.  The  completely  rational  or  impartial 
spectator  could  never  find  any  basis  for  preference 
among  the  competing  goods  of  life.  Have  not  cynicism 
and  satire  flourished  throughout  the  ages  precisely 
through  exploiting  such  an  attitude  of  professed  de¬ 
tachment  from  all  human  ambition  and  desire?  Noth- 


MORALITY  ALL-TOO-STRENUOUS  129 

ing  then  can  be  valuable  for  me  apart  from  some  con¬ 
tributing  will  on  my  part  to  have  it  so. 

A  plausible  doctrine,  but  one  which  a  touch  of  ex¬ 
perience  is  sufficient  to  expose.  What  I  have  been  told 
is  doubtless  a  fact  of  psychology,  but,  with  my  recogni¬ 
tion  of  it,  the  fact  is,  so  to  speak,  out  of  the  bag.  I  f  any 
part  of  the  value  of  an  object  is  determined  by  my  de¬ 
liberate  resolve  to  regard  it  as  valuable,  and  if  I  know 
this,  then  I  know  at  the  same  time  that  I  am  the  victim 
of  my  own  illusion.  Henceforth  I  cannot  forget  that  I 
am  living  in  a  world  which  is  to  some  extent  a  world 
of  make-believe.  But  to  just  that  extent  it  is  unsatis¬ 
factory.  For  I  can  perceive  a  more  convincing  type  of 
value,  a  value  which  I  not  only  freely  adopt  but  which 
I  am  forced  to  adopt,  something  found,  not  made.1 

Another  method  of  meeting  the  situation  at  first 
sight  promises  better  because  it  involves  a  grasping  of 
the  nettle.  The  endlessness  of  the  pursuit  of  the  moral 
ideals  is  a  condition  now  not  only  admitted  but  gladly 
accepted.  The  joys  and  the  zest  of  conflict,  of  adven¬ 
ture,  of  growth,  are  contrasted  with  the  tame  satisfac¬ 
tions  of  safety  and  the  boredom  of  assured  attainment. 
The  ideal  of  a  ‘celestial  lubberland’  is  renounced  in 
favour  of  a  gospel  of  work.  There  is  no  El  Dorado. 
What  does  that  matter?  “For  to  travel  hopefully  is  a 
better  thing  than  to  arrive  and  the  true  success  is  to 

1  The  logic  of  the  situation  is  not  altered  if  we  substitute  in¬ 
stinct  for  voluntary  attention  and  regard  our  values  as  in  part  de¬ 
termined  by  our  instinctive  preferences.  If  I  treat  the  instinct  as 
part  of  the  self,  the  element  contributed  by  the  instinct  to  the 
value  of  the  object  is  so  far  a  diminution  of  the  Teal’  value  of 
the  object. 


130 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


labour.”  The  only  finality  is  that  there  are  no  finalities, 
the  only  certainty  is  that  no  stage  in  evolution  is  the 
last  stage.  Man  is  a  bridge.  Even  the  superman,  once 
we  perceive  that  he  is  only  the  symbol  of  the  strenuous 
ideal,  turns  out  to  be  a  bridge  too.  Our  only  assurance 
is  that  the  gates  of  the  future  are  always  open.  We  are 
called  to  a  struggle  and  there  is  an  unlimited  field  for 
enterprise.  What  more  could  we  ask  of  life? 

There  are  many  strands  in  human  nature  with 
which  the  doctrine  thus  indicated  obviously  accords — 
the  instincts  of  curiosity  and  pugnacity,  for  example, 
and  the  natural  hunger  for  risk.  The  experience  of 
failure  may  generate  this  philosophy :  “Well,  I  failed; 
but  at  any  rate  I  had  the  fun  of  trying.”  So  may  the 
experience  of  success:  “Well,  here  I  am.  So  far  so 
good.  But  of  course  I  can’t  stay  here.  What  next?” 

But  in  spite  of  these  considerations  I  doubt  if  this 
doctrine  of  the  flying  goal  will  commend  itself  to  sober 
reflection.  Like  every  attempt  to  make  a  virtue  of  neces¬ 
sity,  it  confesses  itself  a  second  best  and  thereby  admits 
that  there  is  a  first  best.  It  is  too  histrionic  or  too  ro¬ 
mantic,  according  as  we  choose  to  view  it.  We  are  asked 
to  take  life  as  pure  adventure  and  the  strain  incident 
to  that  attitude  will  inevitably  reveal  itself  in  time. 
The  reason  for  this  is  clear.  To  ask  me  to  be  satisfied 
with  adventure  rather  than  with  achievement  is  to  ask 
me  to  keep  my  eyes  fixed  not  on  objective  results,  but 
upon  inner  effects  in  the  way  of  emotions,  thrills,  exul¬ 
tations.  This  is  to  put  a  premium  upon  sentimentalism. 
In  the  end  I  shall  weary  of  this  forced  and  unnatural 
attitude.  The  nettle  will  begin  to  sting,  grasp  I  never 


MORALITY  ALL-TOO-STRENUOUS  131 

so  firmly,  and  the  theory  of  the  flying  goal  will  be 
revealed  for  what  it  is — another  vain  attempt  to  recon¬ 
cile  me  to  the  hopelessness  which  by  some  strange 
fatality  my  very  moral  earnestness  seems  to  generate.2 

(2)  Morality  demands  decisiveness,  for,  if  we  are 
to  be  moral  we  must  act  and  the  prerequisite  of  action 
is  decision.  This  sounds  a  harmless  truism,  but  it  has 
important  consequences.  Since  our  knowledge  of  the 
facts  in  any  situation  requiring  a  moral  choice  can 
never  be  exhaustive,  our  decisions  are  always  unjusti¬ 
fied  and  frequently  wrong.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
maxim  of  conservativism  is  that  nothing  should  ever 
be  done  for  the  first  time.  The  epigram  is  truer  than 
most  epigrams,  for  it  is  obviously  wrong,  by  any  ideal 
standard  of  righteousness,  to  pass  judgment  on  a  man 
or  a  movement  or  an  institution  or  to  decide  on  a  policy 
until  the  evidence  is  all  in.  Yet,  for  a  finite  being,  the 
evidence  can  never  be  all  in.  So  we  have  to  cut  short 
the  process  of  reflecting  and  weighing  of  alternatives, 
to  make  our  choice  and  to  plunge  into  action,  consoling 
ourselves  with  the  thought  that  we  are  making  the 
best  of  a  bad  job  and  that  there  comes  a  point  in  every 

2  It  is  worth  observing  that  this  is  often  the  point  at  which 
hedonism  appears  as  the  way  out  of  the  predicament.  For  pleasure 
is  the  bird  in  the  hand:  it  is  immediate,  it  is  certain,  and  it  is  in¬ 
herently  convincing.  The  indefinitely  postponed  good  stands  little 
chance  against  it.  Spinoza  has  expressed  this  well.  “If,”  he  writes, 
“we  could  possess  an  adequate  knowledge  of  the  duration  of 
things,  and  could  determine  by  reason  their  periods  of  existence, 
we  should  contemplate  things  future  with  the  same  emotion  as 
things  present ;  and  the  mind  would  desire  as  though  it  were  present 
the  good  which  it  conceived  as  future;  consequently  it  would 
necessarily  neglect  a  lesser  good  in  the  present  etc.”  Eth.  IV,  prop, 
lxii,  schol. 


132 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


situation  where  not  to  decide  is  equivalent  to  deciding. 
Of  course  investigation  and  reflection  are  good  things, 
but  when  they  mean  the  indefinite  postponement  of 
action  they  threaten  to  paralyse  the  will.  It  is  good  to 
be  a  Hamlet, — but  only  up  to  a  point;  for  it  is  not, 
after  all,  through  your  thoroughgoing  Hamlets  that 
the  business  of  the  world  gets  done.  This  then  is  our 
situation:  it  is  never  right  to  act  before  the  evidence 
is  all  in;  it  is  always  right  to  act  before  the  evidence  is 
all  in.  We  are  all  original  sinners  in  this  sense,  that 
whatever  we  do,  no  matter  how  excellent  our  inten¬ 
tions,  we  do  wrong. 

Morality  thus  requires  of  us  that  we  take  sides. 
Doubtless  no  institution  or  policy  or  human  being  is 
wholly  evil,  just  as  none  is  wholly  good.  But  there  will 
come  a  moment  when  we  must  throw  in  our  lot  with 
one  side  or  the  other,  when  we  are  forced  to  assume  that 
one  way  is  right  and  the  other  wrong,  that  one  choice 
represents  the  good  and  the  other  the  evil.  If  we  are 
effectively  to  destroy  evil  we  must  attack  it  with  the 
best  weapons  at  hand,  even  though  by  so  doing  we  run 
the  risk  of  destroying  much  that  is  good  at  the  same 
time. 

But  the  refusal  to  compromise  with  evil  too  easily 
becomes  a  readiness  to  condemn  everything  with  which 
evil  is  associated.  The  result  of  living  too  much  with 
these  necessary  assumptions  is  that  morality  degener¬ 
ates  into  partisanship,  into  the  spirit  which  divides  the 
world  into  hostile  groups  whose  mutual  opposition  is 
their  very  life.  Dominated  by  this  spirit  we  shall  look 
out  upon  a  world  divided  against  itself;  we  shall  see 


MORALITY  ALL-TOO-STRENUOUS 


133 


men  and  their  works  as  either  wholly  good  or  wholly 
evil,  the  white  sheep  as  pure  white  and  the  black  sheep 
as  dense  black.  Looking  inwards  we  shall  discover  the 
same  antithesis :  on  the  one  hand,  the  Flesh,  the  Senses, 
the  Old  Adam,  on  the  other,  the  Soul,  the  Reason,  the 
Spiritual  Man.  And  our  theories  of  the  universe  will 
reflect  our  prevailing  moral  temper.  The  life  of  man 
now  becomes  an  episode  in  the  cosmic  warfare  between 
the  Powers  of  Light  and  the  Powers  of  Darkness,  God 
and  the  Devil,  Spirit  and  Matter,  while  his  destiny 
swings  between  a  Heaven  of  unalloyed  bliss  and  a  Hell 
of  unmitigated  torment. 

But  we  discover  in  time  that  the  world  cannot  be 
cut  up  with  the  hatchet  of  moral  discrimination.  Those 
mental  reservations  with  which  we  terminated  the 
process  of  reflection  and  took  sides  will  make  their 
presence  felt;  we  shall  find  it  intolerable  to  live  in  a 
world  of  abstract  classifications.  The  world  refuses  to 
fit  into  our  schemes.  Things  reveal  themselves  as  a  con¬ 
fusing  mixture  of  good  and  evil.  We  find  ourselves  in 
some  unguarded  moment  discerning  amiable  and  even 
admirable  qualities  in  those  whom  we  ought  to  con¬ 
demn  as  vicious;  serious  faults  turn  out  to  be  merely 
the  seamy  side  of  virtues ;  damnable  practices  produce 
beneficent  results;  the  boundary  line  between  pleasure 
and  pain  becomes,  on  scrutiny,  surprisingly  difficult  to 
mark,  and  the  heretics  everywhere  seem  capable  of 
giving  a  few  points  to  the  orthodox. 

Yet  in  the  interests  of  morality  we  are  reluctant  to 
admit  these  things.  The  consequences  seem  too  peril¬ 
ous.  That  type  of  impartiality  which  insists  that  there 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


134 

is  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides  seems  too  like  indiffer¬ 
ence,  the  love  which  sees  a  soul  of  good  in  things  evil 
too  like  sentimental  blindness,  and  the  aesthetic  intui¬ 
tion  which,  without  judging,  exhibits  the  individual 
with  all  his  qualities  unlovely  and  lovely  too  like  pas¬ 
sive  toleration.  To  talk  of  beyond  good  or  evil  is  merely 
to  temporise  with  the  enemy. 

But,  with  this,  we  confess  that  the  remedy  for  our 
discomfort,  if  remedy  there  be,  lies  outside  the  scope  of 
the  practical  will.  The  source  of  the  trouble  lies  in  the 
necessary  assumptions  of  morality  itself:  the  earnest 
militant  attitude  is  generating  a  poison  of  its  own.  If 
we  ourselves  and  our  world  are  to  be  made  whole  again 
we  shall  have  to  abandon  this  attitude  and  seek  restora¬ 
tion  in  some  such  experience  perhaps  as  mysticism  is 
concerned  to  cultivate. 

(3)  Morality  demands  not  only  decisiveness  but 
that  we  be  in  earnest  with  our  decisions.  We  must  take 
our  work  seriously,  ‘put  our  whole  self’  into  it.  We 
must  behave  as  if  every  commitment  were  final  and  as 
if  every  enterprise  were  the  absolute  good.  This  in  fact 
is  a  true  description  of  our  attitude  when  we  are  ab¬ 
sorbed.  The  cause  or  the  task  engages  and  satisfies  all 
of  us,  it  gathers  up  into  its  service  all  our  interests.  We 
need  not  go  elsewhere  to  find  the  good.  It  is  here  now. 
Our  devotion  exhibits  a  quality  which  earns  for  itself 
properly  the  name  religious,  and  the  object  of  it  is 
called  God. 

Yet  the  resolve  to  treat  the  partial  good  as  the  total 
good,  the  particular  as  the  universal,  though  justified 
in  practice,  has  involved  us  in  falsehood.  No  one  par- 


MORALITY  ALL-TOO-STRENUOUS 


135 


ticular  can  exhaust  the  universal,  and  the  original 
distortion  of  the  truth  will  eventually  make  itself  felt. 
That  it  does  so  is  sufficiently  attested  by  the  familiar 
(and  wholesome)  dread  of  the  specialist,  whether  he 
puts  in  an  appearance  in  the  court-room,  the  nursery, 
the  sick-room,  or  the  Academy.  For  the  specialist  has 
no  common  sense,  that  is,  no  sense  of  the  things  that 
are  common :  he  is  over-concentrated  and  sees  the 
pathological  symptom  and  not  the  offender,  the  intel¬ 
ligence-quotient  in  place  of  the  child,  the  tonsil  but  not 
the  patient,  the  use  of  the  caesura  but  not  the  poem. 

But  your  specialist — and  as  practical  beings  we  are 
all  specialists — is  not  unaware  of  the  blindness  which 
may  befall  him. 

The  sense  of  discomfort  reveals  itself  in  two  ways. 
First,  we  discover  that  with  over-concentration  we  have 
lost  sight  of  the  end.  Our  work  has  become  mechanical 
and  therefore  pointless.  In  becoming  masters  of  the 
means  we  find  that  the  means  have  mastered  us.  I  f  our 
own  age  is  bewildered  it  is  in  part  because  some  per¬ 
ception  of  the  futility  of  mere  technique  has  dawned 
upon  us.  Prizing  responsibility,  insisting  upon  strenu- 
osity  and  success,  expert  in  all  the  devices  of  efficiency 
and  the  division  of  labour,  we  know  not  what  to  do  with 
our  efficiency  except  to  devote  it  to  developing  greater 
efficiency,  nor  with  our  time  except  to  spend  it  in  in¬ 
venting  means  for  saving  more  time.  Our  profits  are 
all  reinvested  in  the  business  of  living.  “Business  for 
business’  sake”  ought  to  mean  a  disinterested  enthu¬ 
siasm  for  business:  in  fact  it  now  means  the  senseless 
occupation  of  “stimulating  production”  and  “keeping 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


136 

the  wheels  of  industry  moving.”  “Truth  for  Truth’s 
sake”  has  come  to  mean  pedantry,  “Art  for  Art’s  sake” 
decoration  or  sheer  wilfulness,  “Duty  for  Duty’s  sake” 
drudgery. 

What  has  happened  is  that  the  various  ends  we  have 
proposed  to  ourselves,  each  claiming  to  be  the  absolute 
good  and  to  exist  for  its  own  sake,  have  become  alien¬ 
ated  from  each  other.  In  losing  touch  with  each  other 
they  have  lost  touch  with  “life” — with  that  universal 
good  which  each  in  turn  vainly  tries  to  embody.  Our 
predicament  is  that  we  can  no  longer  see  how  our  par¬ 
tial  goods  or  specialisms  belong  together.  We  see  that 
none  of  these  things  prosper  in  solitude,  that  such 
threatened  division  of  sovereignty  is  intolerable  and 
that  the  separate  claimants  must  somehow  learn  to  live 
together.  The  problem  is  to  learn  how  to  bring  this  to 
pass.  All  we  can  be  sure  of  is  that  since  the  impulse  to 
action  has  been  extinguished  by  our  taking  too  seri¬ 
ously  the  assumptions  of  action,  the  corrective  must 
come  through  some  reversal  of  the  direction  of  prac¬ 
tical  attention.3 

The  other  form  in  which  the  discomfort  makes  it- 

3  Professor  Irving  Babbitt’s  book,  The  New  Laocoon,  “An 
Essay  on  the  Confusion  of  the  Arts,”  contains  an  interesting  illus¬ 
tration  of  the  consequences  of  over-specialization  in  the  field  of  the 
arts.  He  there  shows  how  the  lines  of  distinction  between  the  several 
arts  are  tending  to  disappear,  poetry  trying  to  become  pictorial, 
sculpture  to  become  dramatic,  colour  imitating  music — witness  the 
symphonies  of  the  colour-organ.  Professor  Babbitt  himself  deplores 
this  tendency,  but  it  may,  after  all,  be  a  healthy  symptom,  as  if 
the  several  arts,  each  weary  of  its  own  policy  of  rigorous  self- 
determination,  were  seeking  blindly  to  find  their  way  back  to  some 
community  of  spirit  and  purpose. 


MORALITY  ALL-TOO-STRENUOUS 


137 

self  known  is  a  mood  for  which  it  is  hard  to  find  a 
name.  In  it  are  blended  scrupulousness  and  detach¬ 
ment.  Having  come  to  doubt  the  worth  of  the  thing  we 
are  doing,  we  pursue  the  process  of  reflection  further 
and  we  end  in  the  familiar  state  of  mind  in  which  no 
object  can  command  our  loyalty  because  to  select  any 
one  is  to  sacrifice  all  the  others.  All  choice,  it  has  been 
said,  is  destructive  of  possibilities.  We  may  reach  a 
pass  where  this  is  no  longer  an  abstract  proposition  but 
a  truth  made  real  to  us  in  agony  of  indecision.  Decision 
is  paralysed  by  the  thought  of  the  might-have-beens. 
All  good  things  appear  equally  good  and  therefore  a 
preference  for  any  one  means  the  irrevocable  surrender 
of  all  the  rest.  Facing  such  a  world  of  independent 
goods  we  can  never  be  sure  that  private  loss  is  public 
gain,  we  can  be  sure  that  private  gain  is  loss,  both 
private  and  public.  We  may  know  what  it  is  to  sacrifice 
but  not  what  it  is  to  renounce,  we  may  gain  temporary 
success  but  never  permanent  achievement. 

If  in  the  foregoing  I  have  chosen  to  analyse  the 
malaise  of  the  moral  life  in  its  extreme  forms  that  is 
only  because  such  a  method  offers  the  best  chance  both 
for  a  correct  diagnosis  and  for  the  discovery  of  a  cure. 
It  is  clear  that  the  real  source  of  the  trouble  lies  in 
being  too  persistent  in  the  necessary  assumptions  of 
responsible  action.  These  assumptions  exercise  a  kind 
of  fascination  over  the  mind;  without  our  conscious 
consent  the  partial  truths  with  which  we  set  out  estab¬ 
lish  a  claim  to  be  the  whole  truth,  partial  goods  to  be 
the  total  good.  The  road  turns  out  to  be  down  hill  and 
the  acceleration  due  to  gravity  (both  metaphorically 


138 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


and  literally)  gets  a  hold  upon  us.  The  attempt  at  self¬ 
recovery  through  any  deliberate  effort  of  will,  such  as 
assuring  ourselves  that  we  ought  to  see  value  in  the 
things  that  have  unaccountably  lost  it,  is  hopeless.  This 
is  only  to  make  the  bearings  still  hotter.  If  we  are  to 
be  re-equipped  again  for  confident  action  there  must 
come  a  pause  in  the  life  of  effort,  not  merely  to  provide 
for  a  moral  holiday  in  the  sense  of  a  relaxation,  but  in 
order  that  we  may  recapture  that  kind  of  experience 
in  which  some  particular  enterprise  appears  to  us, 
without  effort,  as  a  concrete  embodiment  of  the  good. 
In  short,  we  may  say  that  if  morality  means  making 
good  we  must  first  see  good,  and  not  only  first  see  good 
but  recover  our  vision  of  it  whenever  the  making  of 
good  becomes  self-defeating. 

To  see  good  in  this  sense  is  the  goal  of  the  mystic. 


CHAPTER  XI 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 

THE  preceding  chapter  was  concerned  with  show¬ 
ing  that  the  life  of  practical  morality  produces 
strains  which  may  find  appropriate  relief  in  mystical 
experience.  Making  good,  if  that  may  serve  to  describe 
the  essence  of  the  moral  task,  is  not  enough.  Man  needs 
also  to  see  good:  I  n  the  present  chapter  our  purpose  is 
to  show  that  seeing  good  is  not  enough.  The  mystical 
moment  is  not  self-contained:  it  passes  by  inherent 
necessity  into  making  good. 

Let  us  leave  generalities  and  come  to  some  particular 
illustrations  of  this  principle. 

Love — and  I  use  the  term  here  in  its  widest  sense  to 
include  parental  love,  love  between  the  sexes,  and  the 
love  of  the  saint  for  his  fellow  man — is  a  form  of  seeing 
good.  It  reaches  some  point  beyond  good  or  evil  in  the 
other  individual  and  from  this  position  it  is  able  to 
say,  'Neither  do  I  condemn  thee.’  Popular  opinion  dis¬ 
cerns  in  such  a  judgment  only  love’s  traditional  blind¬ 
ness.  And,  indeed,  love  does  not  seem  to  attach  much 
importance  to  the  classifications  of  the  shrewd  prac¬ 
tical  world  which,  with  mind  unclouded  by  emotion,  is 
insistent  to  separate  the  good  from  the  bad  in  men.  Yet 
this  superiority  to  conventional  judgments  does  not 
mean  indifference,  any  more  than  forgiveness  means 
the  abandonment  of  criticism.  It  is  no  mere  negative 
attitude;  it  indicates  the  working  of  a  positive  insight 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


140 

into  the  character  of  the  other  individual  such  that  the 
division  of  him  into  a  good  self  and  a  bad  self  is  seen 
to  be  inadequate.  The  discovery  which  genuine  love 
announces  is  the  revelation  of  the  other  individual  in 
his  wholeness,  no  longer  a  mere  meeting  place  of  ab¬ 
stract  universals,  ‘good/  ‘bad/  etc.  No  human  being 
can  be  ‘saved’  unless  he  has  in  him  the  power  to  recog¬ 
nise  the  saving  ideal  when  it  is  presented  to  him;  the 
achievement  of  love  is  to  perceive  that  power  in  the 
other  being.  What  is  bad  in  him  thus  ceases  to  have 
the  last  word. 

Yet  all  this  may  seem  dogmatic  assertion.  To  out¬ 
ward  observation  love’s  so-called  insight  seems  in¬ 
distinguishable  from  indifference.  Are  there  then  any 
marks  by  which  we  may  recognise  the  authentic  in¬ 
sight  ? 

Love  wears  an  air  of  assurance  towards  the  future. 
It  is  confident  that  its  judgment,  however  radical  or 
absurd-seeming  now,  will  eventually  win  general  cor¬ 
roboration.  He  whom  the  saint  calls  brother  will  be¬ 
come  a  brother  in  fact  as  well  as  in  promise;  the  man 
and  the  woman  who  have  experienced  the  mutual  reve¬ 
lation  of  love  know  for  a  certainty  that  no  future  dis¬ 
covery  of  the  details  of  each  other’s  characters  can  can¬ 
cel  their  present  insight.  Love  stakes  its  policy  on  a 
prophecy,  it  acts  now  as  though  that  prophecy  were 
true. 

But  its  prophecy  has  to  be  made  good.  Forgiveness, 
for  example,  imposes  a  responsibility  on  the  forgiver 
to  work  to  bring  to  fulfilment  that  character  whose 
possibilities  have  already  been  discerned.  The  love 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 


141 

of  man  and  woman,  while  it  is  in  one  sense  a  final 
achievement,  has  to  be  worked  into  the  texture  of  daily 
living.  The  love  which  is  not  equivalent  at  least  to  this 
kind  of  active  good  will  and  which  rejects  respon¬ 
sibility  is  an  impostor.  Its  true  name  is  sentimentality. 

The  genuine  insight  may  be  known,  then,  by  the 
impulse  inherent  in  it  to  complete  its  own  meaning  by 
creating  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for. 

From  this  point  of  view  we  can  understand  in  part 
the  workings  of  that  process.  In  so  far  as  we  are  now 
concerned  with  the  manner  of  approach  to  the  moral 
failings  of  the  individual  the  method  of  love  may  be 
identified  with  non-resistance.  The  first  object  of  this 
policy  is  to  make  the  other  individual  accept  one’s 
judgment  of  his  ultimate  quality.  If  I  meet  wrath  with 
a  soft  answer  it  is  because  I  know  that  the  angry  man 
has  momentarily  forgotten  himself  and  I  propose  to 
recall  him  to  his  senses.  If  I  meet  persistent  misinter¬ 
pretation  of  my  motives  with  an  equally  steady  refusal 
to  take  offence,  it  is  because  I  discern  some  seed  of  fair 
judgment  in  my  critic  and  I  propose  to  give  it  a  fa¬ 
vourable  climate  to  grow  in.  My  non-resistance,  when 
it  is  valid,  is  never  mere  generosity  and  kindness :  it  is 
the  attempt  to  make  my  opponent  see  in  himself  what 
I  see  in  him,  to  lift  him  in  sight  of  his  own  ultimate 
integrity. 

Further,  if  two  individuals  have  reached  this  com¬ 
mon  level  of  insight  it  is  not  necessary  for  either  to 
ignore  the  faults  of  the  other.  Criticism  need  neither 
be  discarded  nor  suppressed.  Indeed,  it  is  only  those 
who  are  not  united  by  this  bond  of  understanding  who 


142 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


need  fear  mutual  criticism,  for  if  there  is  no  common 
platform  from  which  criticism  may  be  regarded  im¬ 
personally ,  the  finding  of  fault  may  become  intermi¬ 
nable — and  deadly. 

The  sphere  of  the  argumentative  intellect  is  the  world 
where  all  things  exist  by  way  of  balance  of  opposites,  where 
for  every  black  there  is  a  white,  and  for  every  pro  a  con; 
and,  if  we  lived  only  by  the  intellect,  there  could  be  no  prog¬ 
ress,  for  argument  could  be  met  by  equal  argument.  “An 
eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth”  is  the  justice  of  the 
intellect,  and  that  warfare  may  go  on  for  ever.  We  can  only 
escape  from  an  eternity  of  opposites  by  rising  above  them 
like  that  spirit  which  fixed  the  balance  in  the  heavens  and 
made  equal  centrifugal  and  centripetal.  It  was  that  spirit 
which  would  fain  have  admitted  man  to  its  own  sphere, 
showing  how  to  escape  from  the  dominion  of  the  opposites 
by  rising  above  them.  It  counselled  forgiveness  until  seventy 
times  seven — a  hard  saying,  no  doubt,  to  those  who  have 
just  cause  for  offence.  But  it  is  the  only  way  by  which  we 
can  be  melted  and  made  one  in  the  higher  spheres.  .  .  . 1 

Thus  we  can  say  that  criticism  without  love  is  a 
vain  clash  of  weapons,  while  love  without  criticism  is 
blind  sentiment.  Neither  without  the  other  is  complete. 
From  criticism  we  ascend  to  love,  from  love  descend 
to  criticism. 

Prayer,  when  successful,  is  another  example  of  see¬ 
ing  good  in  the  sense  here  intended.  By  prayer  I  do  not 
mean  the  petition  for  particular  good  things,  whether 
spiritual  or  material.  This  represents  merely  the  at- 

1  “A.  E.”  [George  Russell],  Letter  to  The  Irish  Times,  Dec.  25, 
1917. 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 


143 


tempt  to  get  by  magic  what  we  might  properly  hope  to 
achieve  by  natural  methods.  Living  only  on  the  ex¬ 
ploitation  of  human  weakness  and  ignorance,  it  is 
destined  to  be  discredited  by  every  increase  in  knowl¬ 
edge  and  self-respect.  But  there  is  another  kind  of 
prayer,  still  petitional  in  form,  wholly  general  in 
direction,  which  seeks  that  which  is  presumably  unat¬ 
tainable  by  our  own  effort — sanity  and  wholeness. 
“Create  in  me  a  clean  heart,  O  God,  and  renew  a  right 
spirit  within  me.”  Such  prayer  is  more  than  a  vague 
yearning  after  righteousness :  it  involves  the  hard  work 
of  self-scrutiny.  He  who  prays  must  examine  himself 
in  the  light  of  the  best  he  knows,  deepening  his  knowl¬ 
edge  of  whatever  is  vile  in  himself.  And  in  facing  his 
faults  he  must  repudiate  them ;  the  Old  Adam  one  must 
disown  as  being  alien. 

But  here  we  meet  the  peculiar  predicament  of 
prayer.  What  assurance  can  a  man  have  either  that  he 
may  not  at  any  time  abandon  the  process  of  self-analy¬ 
sis  too  soon  or  that  the  process  may  not  be  in  principle 
interminable?  For,  on  the  one  hand,  the  self-knowl¬ 
edge  of  any  man,  even  aided  by  the  arts  of  social  criti¬ 
cism,  goes  but  a  little  way.  He  may  think  that  his  heart 
is  truly  disciplined  when,  as  a  fact,  the  light  that  is  in 
him  is  darkness.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  recognises 
this  danger,  what  is  there  left  to  say  but  that  he  can 
never  hope  to  close  the  critical  account?  The  only  way 
to  guard  against  premature  satisfaction  is  to  hold  open 
the  possibility  that  there  are  deeper  strata  of  evil  in 
the  self  to  be  explored.  This  is  the  moment  in  experi¬ 
ence  when  the  doctrine  of  original  sin  and  the  power- 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


144 

lessness  of  the  sinner  to  save  himself  declare  their 
truth  and  get  their  hold  upon  the  mind. 

For  the  moment  all  I  am  concerned  to  point  out  is 
that  in  prayer  the  problem  of  prayer  is  somehow  solved. 
As  a  fact,  the  sinner  does  emerge  from  prayer  with  the 
conviction  that  he  is  free.  Hope  has  returned.  He  has 
‘left  his  burden  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross' ;  he  can  make 
a  fresh  start,  not  with  any  animal  assurance  or  aggres¬ 
sive  healthy-mindedness,  but  in  a  spirit  at  once  chas¬ 
tened  and  confident.  His  sins  have  not  ceased  to  be  sins, 
but  they  no  longer  paralyse  his  movements. 

The  experience  which  has  produced  this  change  of 
temper  might  be  described,  in  the  most  formal  and  ex¬ 
ternal  fashion,  as  the  act  of  realising  the  presupposition 
of  one’s  prayer.  ‘Thou  couldst  not  seek  Me  hadst  thou 
not  already  found  Me.’  That  painful  self-criticism  was 
made  possible  by  some  effective  grasp  upon  the  ideal, 
was,  in  fact,  the  evident  working  of  the  ideal  in  and 
upon  the  self.  Thus  the  success  of  prayer  might  be  de¬ 
fined  as  an  immediate  realisation  of  the  truth  that  ‘to 
recognise  a  limit  is  to  be  already  beyond  it,  in  idea.’ 
From  this  point  of  view  we  can  see  why  prayer  is  a 
process  in  which  sin  is  overcome  by  the  very  act  of  re¬ 
pudiating  it,  yet  overcome  not  in  detail  but  in  prin¬ 
ciple.  To  adopt  the  ideal  is  to  identify  oneself  with  it 
and  that  is  the  first  necessary  condition  of  ‘salvation.’ 
But  it  is  not  a  sufficient  condition.  The  ideal  is  but  the 
framework  of  character,  all  the  rest  has  to  be  built  in. 
Thus  prayer  would  not  be  prayer  unless  it  created  that 
paradoxical  consciousness  of  guilt  and  perfection,  of 
humility  and  confidence,  of  selflessness  and  power. 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 


145 


So  far  we  have  been  illustrating  the  necessity  of  the 
connection  between  seeing  good  and  making  good.  We 
may  now  try  to  formulate  the  general  principle  upon 
which  this  necessity  seems  to  depend.  It  may  be  ex¬ 
pressed  thus:  Whatever  valuable  quality  in  objects 
a  mind  can  appreciate  is  thereby  shown  to  be  a  property 
of  that  mind.  The  easiest  way  to  grasp  what  this  prin¬ 
ciple  means  is  to  recall  some  of  its  common  practical 
applications. 

Why  do  we  attach  importance  to  modesty,  to  hu¬ 
mility,  to  self-effacement?  Why  do  we  agree  with  the 
sentiment  expressed  in  Lao  Tze’s  dictum,  “The  self- 
displaying  man  cannot  shine”?  Why  is  it  that  when 
contemporary  sophistication  tries  to  sweep  these  an¬ 
cient  virtues  into  the  discard  with  a  contemptuous 
reference  to  inferiority-complexes  the  inward  monitor 
will  whisper  ‘Bosh!’?  The  answer  is  that  these  things 
are  admirable  not  as  deliberately  cultivated  states  of 
mind,  but  as  symptoms.  There  is  nothing  desirable 
about  modesty  as  an  end  in  itself;  in  so  far  as  it  is 
accompanied  by  self-consciousness  it  is  false;  even  the 
Socratic  profession  of  ignorance  has  a  touch  of  irony, 
contains  an  element  of  pose,  which  detracts  from  its 
worth.  The  modesty  we  esteem  is  the  modesty  we  ex¬ 
pect  to  find  in  those  who  are  devoted  to  some  ideal.  It 
is  the  man  who  has  wrestled  longest  with  the  problems 
of  philosophy  who  is  likely  to  be  most  impressed  with 
the  complexity  of  the  issues  and  to  have  the  deepest  rev¬ 
erence  for  truth.  It  is  he,  therefore,  who  will  be  able 
to  perceive  the  smallness  of  his  own  contribution.  “All 
I  have  done,”  Bergson  is  reported  to  have  said  to  a  too 


146 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


gushing  disciple,  “all  I  have  done  is  to  throw  light  on 
a  few  tiny  points  of  detail.”  The  one  hopeless  state  is 
complacency.  Hope  comes  with  the  dawn  of  humility, 
fof  humility  is  the  sign  that  one  has  caught  sight  of 
that  thing  greater  than  oneself  whereby  one  judges 
oneself. 

But  our  judgment  has  a  positive  as  well  as  a  negative 
side.  We  not  only  condemn  the  lack  of  modesty  as  fatal, 
we  are  ready  to  attribute  to  a  man  the  properties  of  the 
ideal  at  which  he  aims,  for  his  modesty  is  the  sign  of 
the  ideal  at  work  in  him.  We  take  the  will  for  the  deed 
and  good  intentions  are  more  than  half  the  battle. 
Without  such  generosity  in  judging  human  life  would 
be  intolerable.  If  justice  consisted  in  giving  every  man 
what  he  deserved  on  the  basis  of  actual  performance 
it  would  mean  a  short  shrift  for  most,  even  if  the  pre¬ 
liminary  difficulty  of  finding  anyone  qualified  to  mete 
out  justice  had  been  overcome.  I  f  human  justice  is  more 
than  natural  justice — i.e.,  than  the  survival  of  the  fit¬ 
test  in  a  harshly  competitive  world — it  is  because  in 
dealing  with  human  beings  we  are  dealing  with  crea¬ 
tures  in  the  making  and  therefore  their  promise  as 
well  as  their  achievement  must  be  considered  in  casting 
up  the  account.  Thus,  without  regard  to  the  level  at¬ 
tained,  a  man  is  properly  treated  as  honest  or  faithful 
or  frank  or  considerate  of  others  in  so  far  as  he  is  in 
earnest  with  these  things.  If  he  is  working  for  them 
they  are  working  for  and  in  him.  The  man  is  where  his 
treasure  is. 

Perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  use  of  our  principle 
is  where  the  values  concerned  belong  to  the  life  of  some 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 


147 


social  group — a  profession,  a  nation,  a  church.  In  so 
far  as  the  individual  identifies  himself  with  the  life 
and  purpose  of  the  group  he  appropriates  its  power  and 
significance.  In  a  time  when  theories  of  “the  social 
self”  and  their  exaggerated  claims  are  enjoying  a 
vogue,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  give  specific  illustra¬ 
tions.  But  those  theories,  though  carried  to  an  extreme 
in  the  suggestion  that  the  individual  is  simply  a  part  or 
a  function  or  a  differentiation  of  “the  social  whole,”  are 
based  on  the  indisputable  fact  that  the  individual  is 
not  made  significant  by  the  extent  to  which  he  excludes 
from  his  interests  the  elements  of  the  common  life.  On 
the  contrary,  to  be  loyal  to  these  more  comprehensive 
social  ideals  is  to  appropriate  them,  and  the  worth  of 
the  individual  is  enhanced  by  his  willingness  to  serve 
them. 

We  may  now  revert  to  the  principle  as  first  stated 
and  look  at  it  more  closely.  “Whatever  valuable  quality 
in  objects  a  mind  can  appreciate  is  thereby  shown  to  be 
a  property  of  that  mind.”  This  differs  from  the  fa¬ 
miliar  thesis  that  to  recognise  a  limit  is  to  be  beyond 
it,  for  appreciation  means  more  than  knowledge — it 
means  knowledge  plus  adoption.  That  will-to-be-hon¬ 
est,  for  example,  through  which  honesty  comes  to  be 
imputed  to  a  man,  involves  not  merely  an  intellectual 
apprehension  of  honesty  as  a  moral  principle  but  adop¬ 
tion  of  or  dedication  to  honesty  as  an  end.  The  distinc¬ 
tion  is  necessary,  for,  unless  we  are  going  to  give  a 
special  meaning  to  the  word  ‘know/  it  seems  clear  that 
we  can  recognise  values  without  identifying  ourselves 
with  them.  One  may  be  a  person  of  catholic  sympathies 


148 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


and  therefore  able  through  imagination  to  achieve  an 
aesthetic  understanding  of  types  of  character  which  yet 
make  no  practical  appeal  to  one.  One  may  understand 
the  attractions  of  the  life  of  the  recluse  or  of  the  states¬ 
man  or  of  the  arctic  explorer  without  feeling  drawn  to 
any  of  these  careers,  however  admirable  in  themselves. 
What  is  true  of  the  knowledge  of  good  is  still  more 
obviously  true  of  the  knowledge  of  evil.  I  may  admire 
a  Napoleon — yet  have  no  wish  to  be  like  him.  A  De 
Quincey  may  thrill  me  with  the  thought  of  murder  as 
a  fine  art  without  rousing  any  homicidal  tendencies 
in  me. 

Granted,  then,  that  appreciation  means  first  getting 
hold  of  and  then  adopting  the  idea,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  see  why  those  two  steps  should  be  emphasised  as  the 
necessary  prerequisites  of  making  good.  The  first  re¬ 
quirement  for  becoming  truthful,  for  example,  is  a 
grasp  upon  truthfulness  as  a  universal.  The  virtue  can¬ 
not  be  acquired  piecemeal,  by  the  learning  of  particu¬ 
lar  acts  or  special  rules.  One  may  point  out  that  truth¬ 
fulness  means  truthfulness  in  deed  as  well  as  in  word, 
that  one  can  lie  by  suggestion,  by  silence,  by  suppres¬ 
sion  of  the  truth;  one  may  insist  upon  the  difference 
between  historical  or  scientific  and  poetic  truth,  be¬ 
tween  brutal  frankness  and  tact,  between  justifiable 
reticence  and  truth-telling ;  one  may  elaborate  the  doc¬ 
trine  that  it  takes  two  to  make  the  truth,  and  so  on.  But 
this  way  of  teaching  truthfulness  is  futile.  There  is  no 
end  to  these  refinements  and  one  cannot  hope  to  exhaust 
all  the  relevant  situations  or  distinctions.  The  learner 
may  have  mastered  all  our  instructions  and  still  have 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 


149 


the  lie  in  the  soul.  He  may  have  done  his  duty  and  still 
be  an  unprofitable  servant,  for  the  essential  thing  has 
been  missed :  that  he  should  first  grasp  the  universal 
idea  of  truthfulness  as  a  disposition  of  will,  a  spirit  or 
principle  of  interpretation  to  be  brought  to  bear  upon 
particular  instances.  With  this,  the  first  great  obstacle 
has  been  overcome :  the  rest  is  a  matter  of  application 
of  the  idea  to  details. 

But  this  is  not  enough.  The  second  requirement  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  that  the  idea  shall  become  an  ideal, 
shall  be  in  such  wise  appropriated  as  to  provoke  self- 
criticism  and  arouse  the  desire  for  self-improvement. 

A  further  clarification  of  the  doctrine  we  have  been 
expounding  and  illustrating  may  conveniently  be  un¬ 
dertaken  by  considering  a  criticism  often  brought 
against  it.  In  practice,  it  is  urged,  the  doctrine  has  its 
dangers.  I  f  we  tell  a  man  that  the  will  is  equivalent  to 
the  deed,  may  he  not  take  us  at  our  word  and  offer  us 
everything  but— deeds?  If  the  disinterested  servant 
of  truth  or  beauty  or  goodness  may  say,  ‘Not  I,  but 
Beauty  or  Truth  that  worketh  in  me,’  and  yet,  vicari¬ 
ously,  take  credit  for  what,  by  admission,  is  none  of  his 
doing,  why  may  not  smaller  men  see  in  all  this  a  sanc¬ 
tion  for  laissez  faire?  The  danger  is  most  real  and  con¬ 
spicuous  where  through  loyalty  to  some  group  the  in¬ 
dividual  is  supposed  to  share  in  the  qualities  and 
achievements  of  the  group.  The  college  student  may 
have  contributed  nothing  towards  the  victory  of  the 
football  team,  but,  as  college  loyalty  is  now  inter¬ 
preted,  he  may  feel  that  the  triumph  is  his  as  well  as 
the  team’s.  The  sun  never  sets  on  the  British  Empire, 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


ISO 

but  that  hardly  justifies  the  attitude  of  a  certain  type 
of  Englishman  who  moves  about  the  world  with  the 
conscious  assurance  that  the  sun  never  sets  upon  him, 
whatever  may  be  the  fate  in  this  respect  of  lesser  breeds 
without  the  Law.  In  short,  does  not  our  principle  lend 
itself  too  readily  to  exploitation  by  the  lazy  or  the 
sentimental  ? 

I  do  not  propose  to  deny  the  facts.  Wherever  loyalty 
and  corporate  enthusiasm  are  exalted  you  find  the 
tendency  to  treat  feeling  as  an  equivalent  for  effort. 
Yet  it  is  only  fair  to  add  that  this  situation  may  be 
caused  by  the  qualities  of  laziness  and  sentimentality 
rather  than  by  the  principle  itself.  But  the  one  valid 
answer  to  the  criticism  is  to  point  out  that  anyone  who 
exploits  the  doctrine  on  his  own  behalf  admits  that  he 
has  betrayed  it.  If  I  am  right  in  saying  that  in  some 
parts  of  life,  my  power,  my  success,  my  virtues  are 
derivative,  are,  in  fact,  the  fruits  of  my  disinterested 
devotion  to  my  ‘cause/  then  I  cannot  be  right  in  say¬ 
ing  that  this  establishes  the  claims  of  self-interest.  If 
I  am  entitled  to  a  type  of  approval  only  if  I  set  my 
heart  upon  some  object,  X,  I  cannot  in  logic  or  justice 
look  for  that  approval  when  I  consciously  set  my  heart 
upon  myself  and  not  upon  X. 

But  the  question  may  persist:  How  do  you  distin¬ 
guish  the  genuine  from  the  false  devotion?  Here  the 
only  answer  I  see  is,  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them.  Royce,  who  in  his  philosophy  of  loyalty  has  given 
the  most  notable  contemporary  expression  of  the  doc¬ 
trine  in  question,  insisted  that  loyalty  must  be  practi¬ 
cal,  showing  itself  in  deeds.  And  this  does  not  connote 


BEYOND  GOOD  OR  EVIL 


I5i 

something  merely  arbitrary  in  the  definition  of  loyalty. 
In  the  very  nature  of  things,  the  value  conferred  upon 
me  by  my  loyalty  is  not  a  final  acquisition  or  achieve¬ 
ment  :  it  is  a  crag  round  which  I  have  thrown  the  noose 
of  idea;  now  I  can  haul  on  the  rope.  It  represents  the 
beginning  not  the  end  of  moral  effort. 

This  then  is  the  sense  in  which  we  are  to  interpret 
the  mystical  vision  of  the  good.  It  is  a  prescience  of 
the  good,  a  foreknowing  in  its  totality  of  that  which 
moral  effort  has  to  establish  in  detail.  It  is  at  once  an 
end  and  a  beginning,  and  it  is  only  one  because  it  is 
the  other. 

If  we  define  the  task  of  the  practical  will  negatively 
as  the  victory  over  evil  rather  than  positively  as  the 
consolidation  of  the  good,  then  mysticism  might  be  de¬ 
fined  as  the  conscious  alliance  with  a  power  by  which 
all  evil  is  prospectively  conquerable.  It  is  through  this 
alliance  that  the  mystic  can  claim  to  have  triumphed 
over  evil.  But  this  remains  to  the  end  a  vicarious 
achievement.  It  is  the  insight  which  means  neither 
alone  “All  is  well,”  nor  yet  alone  “All  can  be  made 
good,”  but  both  of  these  at  once. 


/ 


u 


CHAPTER  XII 


MYSTICISM  AND  THE  PROBLEM 

OF  EVIL 

ALL  is  well — All  can  be  made  good.”  To  men  of 
-  good  will  this  dark  saying  probably  conveys  as 
much  meaning  as  such  sayings  are  fitted  to  bear,  but 
one  must  not  presuppose  that  kind  of  reader,  so  I  will 
try  to  make  it  less  cryptic  by  devoting  a  chapter  to  a 
closer  study  of  mystical  optimism. 

To  see  the  distinguishing  marks  of  this  attitude  we 
need  to  recall  some  of  the  traditional  ways  of  dealing 
with  evil  with  which  it  stands  contrasted.  Let  me  there¬ 
fore  offer  a  rapid  survey  of  these. 

All  so-called  solutions  of  the  problem  come  back 
ultimately  to  the  judgment  that  evil  is  in  some  sense 
less  real  than  good.  The  most  familiar  form  in  which 
this  judgment  is  expressed  runs:  Evil  is  a  means  to 
good.  Theories  and  solutions  vary  in  accordance  with 
the  special  kind  of  good  selected. 

(i)  Evil  as  contributory  to  ‘the  good  of  the  whole.’ 
The  universe  as  a  whole  is  good:  everything  has  a 
place  in  the  divine  economy.  If  we  could  see  life  under 
the  form  of  eternity  we  should  realise  that,  as  there  are 
no  weeds  in  nature,  so  there  are  no  ultimate  evils  in 
reality.  There  have  been  many  historic  variations  upon 
this  simple  theme :  evil  as  illusory,  evil  as  privation  of 
good,  evil  as  good  ‘in  disguise,’  as  good  out  of  place, 
as  ‘something  torn  from  its  context,’  as  the  shade  in  the 


154 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


picture,  as  a  necessary  but  disappearing  factor  in  ‘the 
world-process  when  taken  as  a  whole.’  I  am  not  now  in¬ 
terested  in  the  various  shades  of  difference  but  in  the 
general  resemblances  between  these  theories.  We  may 
note  two.  First,  the  good  of  the  whole  is  something 
formal  and  abstract.  We  are  not  told  what  the  good  is, 
nor  what  is  our  relation  to  it;  we  are  assured  simply 
that  there  is  a  good  and  that  if  we  could  discern  it  our 
judgment  of  evil  would  be  transformed.  Short  of  such 
discernment  we  are  left  with  little  more  than  an  ar¬ 
bitrary  will-to-be-optimistic  plus  a  number  of  meta¬ 
phors  of  doubtful  value.  Secondly,  evil  is  not  disposed 
of:  it  is  simply  given  a  different  place  and  name.  It 
is  now  transferred  to  the  finite  minds  with  their  ‘lim¬ 
ited  points  of  view.’  The  devil  has  not  been  annihilated 
or  deposed  or  even  aufgehoben:  he  has  been  identified 
with  the  fatal  human  tendency  to  see  things  sub  specie 
temporis.  But  it  still  remains  an  evil  neither  to  be 
explained  nor  banished  that  creatures  with  such  dis¬ 
tressing  ‘points  of  view’  should  exist. 

(2)  Evil  as  a  means  to  the  development  of  charac¬ 
ter, — “soul-making.”  The  evidence  that  suggests  and 
seems  to  justify  this  solution  is  too  familiar  to  call  for 
elaboration.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  opposition,  risk,  hard¬ 
ship,  bereavement,  ignorance,  etc.,  may  produce  salu¬ 
tary  effects.  But  how  far  can  this  idea  be  stretched  as 
a  principle  of  explanation?  It  is  doubtless  true  that 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  ‘the  universe  is  all  the  better 
for  having  a  devil  in  it,’  but  the  issue  touches  not  so 
much  the  fact  of  the  devil’s  existence  as  his  size  and 
power.  It  is  not  opposition  but  the  amount  of  it  which 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 


155 


appals  us.  When  we  have  written  off  so  much  of  the 
world’s  evil  to  the  account  of  soul-making  there  would 
seem  to  be  a  vast  quantity  of  superfluous  opposition  left. 
And,  if  we  choose  to  look  at  the  other  side  of  the  pic¬ 
ture,  we  must  be  struck  with  the  way  in  which  adversity 
has  weakened  character,  extinguished  hope,  suffocated 
human  talent  and  frustrated  human  promise.  There  is 
no  satisfactory  basis  for  optimism  here.  The  principle 
invoked  to  justify  evil  is  the  same  as  that  which  under¬ 
lies  the  attempt  to  exploit  the  doctrine  of  natural  selec¬ 
tion  for  the  same  purpose.  Provided  that  we  do  not 
propose  to  use  ‘fit’  and  ‘survived’  as  interchangeable 
terms,  natural  selection  justifies  us  in  saying  that  those 
who  have  survived  are  fit:  it  does  not  justify  us  in  say¬ 
ing  that  only  the  fit  have  survived.  Souls  have  been  un¬ 
made  as  well  as  made  by  the  journey  through  this  vale 
of  woe,  but  these  unknown  multitudes  have  left  no 
record.  Dead  men  tell  no  tales.  Yet  in  seeking  to  char¬ 
acterise  the  journey  we  must  consider  the  meaning  of 
their  fate  as  well  as  that  of  the  survivors. 

(3)  Evil  as  a  means  to  appreciation.  The  romantic 
solution.  The  presence  of  evil  heightens  our  sense  of 
the  dangerousness,  the  vastness  and  the  splendour  of 
the  universe.  The  one  thing  to  be  got  out  of  life  is — 
thrills,  whether  it  be  the  thrill  of  excitement  or  the 
thrill  of  tragic  reconciliation.  Dragons  are  not  to  be 
slain,  but  to  be  kept,  like  the  tame  and  obliging  stag 
in  some  countries,  and  hunted  for  the  fun  of  the  thing. 
The  sport  is  all.  God  Himself,  on  this  theory,  becomes 
a  spectator  for  whom  the  world’s  drama  is  played,  or 
a  twice-born  Deity  whose  life  is  an  eternal  fall  and 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


156 

conversion,  or  a  playful  Deity  who  eternally  creates 
His  own  antagonists  for  the  sake  of  eternally  overcom¬ 
ing  them,  or  in  some  other  way  ‘goes  out  into  otherness 
and  returns  upon  Himself.’ 

The  elements  of  weakness  in  this  doctrine  have  often 
been  pointed  out  and  there  is  no  need  to  go  over  fa¬ 
miliar  ground.  It  is  enough  to  observe  that  this  is  essen¬ 
tially  a  philosophy  of  failure.  It  offers  consolation,  and 
sanctions  resignation,  by  the  wholly  natural  yet  fatal 
device  of  referring  us  from  the  outer  world  to  the  inner. 
One  fails — but,  see!  it  is  not,  after  all,  a  complete 
failure :  something  has  been  saved  from  the  wreck,  en¬ 
hanced  appreciation,  insight,  emotion.  True,  this  is 
not  what  we  wanted :  we  set  out  to  slay  the  dragon,  but, 
even  though  we  did  not  slay  him,  is  it  not  something 
to  have  realised  how  dragon-fighting  adds  to  the  zest 
of  life?  Here  is  consolation,  but  here  also  is  a  certain 
cooling  of  enthusiasm,  a  falling-off  in  earnestness. 
When  dragon-fighting  has  become  a  sport  it  has  lost 
most  of  its  seriousness.  Thus  this  philosophy  is  good 
for  those  in  whom  failure  has  already  induced  a  mood 
of  detachment  and  who  are  already  disposed  to  take 
life  as  spectators. 

And  this,  in  effect,  is  the  general  criticism  we  have 
to  pass  on  all  the  optimistic  ‘solutions’  that  we  have 
examined.  In  all  of  them  the  individual  is  represented 
as  standing  off  from  and  contemplating  a  universe  in 
which  the  good  and  the  evil  are  so  many  separate  facts 
or  qualities,  and  his  problem  is  to  get  ‘a  point  of  view’ 
from  which  they  may  be  harmonised.  The  mixture  of 
good  and  evil,  just  as  it  stands,  is  somehow  automati- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 


157 


cally  to  justify  itself,  irrespective  of  the  individual’s 
practical  attitude.  The  consequence  is  that  we  are  of¬ 
fered  nothing  but  mechanical  solutions — the  good  is 
supposed  to  ‘cancel’  or  to  ‘outweigh’  or  to  ‘offset’  or  to 
be  ‘heightened  by’  the  evil  in  the  total  account.  Yet 
there  is  no  conceivable  way  by  which  any  amount  of 
good  could  outweigh  a  single  evil  deed;  a  universe 
which  was  all  good  (in  a  quantitative  sense)  except 
for  one  sin  or  one  pang  would  be  an  imperfect  uni¬ 
verse:  it  would  have  a  radical  flaw  in  it.  That  is  why 
these  optimisms  all  lead  in  the  end  to  pessimism. 

But  there  is  another  kind  of  optimism,  which  we  may 
call  active,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  passive  temper  of 
mind  revealed  in  those  we  have  been  discussing.  It  de¬ 
fines  the  problem  of  evil  differently.  The  problem, 
according  to  this  interpretation,  is  not  the  purely  theo¬ 
retical  one  of  explaining  evil,  of  justifying  it  after  the 
event,  but  the  practical  one  of  becoming  reconciled  to 
it.  We  do  not  say:  Here  is  evil;  now  how  are  we  to 
transform  that,  under  the  speculative  gaze,  into  some¬ 
thing  less  than  evil?  but:  Here  is  evil;  how  can  I  hold 
my  head  up,  how  can  I  retain  my  sanity  and  ‘carry  on’ 
in  a  world  where  such  things  are  done  in  the  light  of 
the  sun? 

By  distinguishing  between  the  theoretical  and  the 
practical  forms  of  the  problem  I  do  not  mean  to  imply 
that  they  are  in  principle  separable  and  that  the  latter 
can  be  solved  apart  from  the  former.  The  will  must 
build  upon  fact,  and  a  change  in  my  attitude  towards 
evil  will  require  a  re-interpretation  of  evil.  But  it 
makes  a  considerable  difference  whether  we  emphasise 


158  A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 

the  practical  or  the  theoretical  requirement  in  the 
original  formulation  of  the  problem. 

When  we  define  the  problem  as  that  of  become  recon¬ 
ciled  (not  resigned)  to  evil  we  have  to  note  at  the  out¬ 
set  that  this  presupposes  the  possibility  of  a  confident, 
militant  attitude  towards  evil,  the  attitude  which  de¬ 
clares:  “Let  me  know  the  worst  about  the  universe.  I 
am  not  afraid.  There  is  nothing  so  bad  that  it  cannot 
in  time  be  made  good,  nothing  that  will  make  me 
abandon  the  universe  and  desert  my  post.”  It  is  the 
creating  of  this  temper  of  mind  that  constitutes  the 
greatest  practical  achievement  of  mysticism.  If  Stoi¬ 
cism  is,  in  Gilbert  Murray’s  phrase,  the  failure  of 
nerve,  mysticism  is  the  recovery  of  nerve.  “Tolstoy,” 
wrote  William  James,  “does  well  to  talk  of  it  as  that 
by  which  men  live,  for  that  is  exactly  what  it  is,  a 
stimulus,  an  excitement,  a  faith,  a  force  that  re-infuses 
the  positive  willingness  to  live,  even  in  full  presence 
of  the  evil  perceptions  that  erewhile  made  life  seem 
unbearable.”  It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  partisanship 
that  when  Nietzsche  poured  his  scorn  upon  the  miser¬ 
able  crawling  Christians  and  sang  the  praises  of  the 
strong  and  the  yea-sayers,  he  did  not  see  how  beauti¬ 
fully  the  type  he  despised  exhibited  his  own  will-to- 
power.  “I  would  have  goblins  about  me!”  cries  Zara- 
thustra,  because  he  knows  that  his  courage  is  sufficient 
to  lay  all  ghosts  and  to  put  to  rout  all  questionable 
shapes.  The  strong  man  is  hungry  for  opposition  in 
order  that  he  may  feel  and  prove  his  strength  in  over¬ 
coming  it.  The  Christian  saint,  the  ascetic,  and  the 
mystic,  have  a  passion  for  persecution  and  for  martyr- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 


159 


dom,  a  driving  need  to  know  the  worst  about  life, 
because  these  things  are  but  fuel  to  the  mounting 
flame  of  their  devotion.  In  these  things  they  prove  the 
quality  of  their  love:  they  feel  the  blade  of  the  will 
taking  hold.  This  is  the  optimism  of  the  mystics,  this 
is  their  practical  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil.  But 
since  this  attitude  is  not  mere  postulate,  the  theoretical 
question  arises :  What  must  be  true  about  the  universe 
to  justify  it? 

We  may  gain  some  light  by  considering  the  answer 
of  the  pluralist.  Monistic  theories,  he  declares,  are 
what  stand  in  the  way  of  a  militant  optimism.  Once 
abandon  the  idea  that  there  is  any  one  point  of  view 
which  can  take  in  the  whole  universe,  give  up  the  at¬ 
tempt  to  trace  the  good  and  the  evil  to  a  common  source 
or  to  a  common  principle  of  explanation,  and  you  are 
then  free  to  look  upon  evil  as  an  enemy  which  is  to  be 
shut  out  and  abolished.  Moreover,  if  we  no  longer  refer 
the  evil  to  one  nature  of  things,  but  to  two  or  more  in¬ 
dependent  sources,  then  there  is  no  amount  of  evil  that 
can  possibly  justify  a  radical  pessimism,  for  evil,  being 
independent  of  good,  cannot  infect  it.  We  may  thus 
learn  to  take  experience  piecemeal,  taking  the  good 
and  the  evil  as  they  come,  grateful  for  the  one,  disown¬ 
ing  and  warring  upon  the  other. 

For  my  present  purpose  it  will  be  sufficient  to  sug¬ 
gest  three  criticisms.  First,  this  device  does  not  solve 
the  problem  of  evil:  it  merely  eliminates  it.  There 
would  be  no  problem  unless  the  judgment  of  good  con¬ 
flicted  with  the  judgment  of  evil,  but  they  cannot  con¬ 
flict  unless  these  two  qualities  are  predicated  of  the 


i6o  A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 

same  subject.  Insulate  good  from  evil,  as  this  method 
would  have  us  do,  cancel  the  reference  to  one  universal 
subject  or  substance,  and  the  problem  of  harmonising 
them  disappears.  Second,  if  it  is  true  that  since  the 
evil  has  no  bearing  upon  the  good  no  amount  of  evil 
can  lead  us  to  deny  the  presence  of  good,  then  it  must 
also  be  true  that  no  amount  of  good,  past,  present,  or 
future,  can  make  up  for  the  evil.  Both  are  ultimates. 
Third,  confidence,  assurance,  open-mindedness, — and 
these  are  the  things  we  have  agreed  to  require — are  im¬ 
possible  in  a  pluralistic  universe.  There  can  be  no  basis 
for  confidence,  because  there  can  be  no  basis  for  expec¬ 
tation  of  any  kind.  The  good  that  we  do  may  be  un¬ 
done  because  there  is  nothing  to  conserve  it;  the  evil 
that  we  suppress  may  waken  to  life  and  appear  in  new 
forms.  For  all  we  know  to  the  contrary,  we  may  be 
ploughing  the  sand  or  writing  in  water.  Not  exactly 
fit  symbols  for  practical  optimism  to  adopt ! 

There  is  no  value  in  working  up  the  antithesis  be¬ 
tween  a  too  radical  pluralism  and  a  too  radical  mon¬ 
ism  :  a  situation  where  there  are  two  mutually  exclusive 
theories,  each  of  which  must  live  upon  the  omissions 
and  failures  of  the  other,  calls  not  for  aggravation  but 
for  cure.  And  this  is  the  point  at  which  the  mystics 
have  something  to  offer,  for  they  reveal  the  futility  of 
this  strife.  Radical  monism  makes  the  universe  too 
safe,  radical  pluralism  makes  it  too  risky.  The  require¬ 
ment  we  make  is,  as  we  have  said,  paradoxical:  we 
want  security  and  we  want  danger — enough  of  each 
to  give  meaning  to  the  other.  In  the  historic  bearing  of 
the  mystic  towards  this  situation  we  seem  to  see  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 


161 


solution  applied,  if  not  explicitly  defined.  For  the 
mystic  is  he  who  in  the  conscious  presence  of  the  perils 
of  life  knows  himself  secure,  and  who  even  as  he 
squarely  confronts  evil  knows  that  it  has  not  the  final 
word.  Optimism  and  pessimism,  strenuousness  and 
serenity,  the  acknowledgment  of  evil  and  the  disown¬ 
ing  of  it,  are  here  united.  If  there  is  any  tenable  solu¬ 
tion  of  the  problem  of  evil  we  can  say  at  once  that  it 
will  be  found  in  the  theory  of  the  universe  upon  which 
this  attitude  rests. 

And,  as  for  his  theory,  the  mystic  has  not  left  us 
wholly  in  the  dark  about  that.  In  the  first  place,  he 
insists  that  he  finds  reality  not  merely  prospectively 
good,  but  good  now.  And  is  he  not  justified?  Reality 
could  not  even  be  prospectively  good  unless  it  con¬ 
tained  even  now  the  promise  of  that  fulfilment  and 
was  so  far  absolutely  good.  The  universe  could  not 
grow  good  unless  it  had  a  body  to  grow  on.  I  can  put 
neither  intelligence  nor  enthusiasm  behind  my  efforts 
to  make  the  world  better  unless  I  know  that  there  is 
some  permanent  substance  in  the  world  which  will 
accept  and  assimilate  those  deeds  of  mine  which  har¬ 
monise  with  its  own  nature.  Secondly,  for  the  mystic, 
this  substance  is  God,  a  Being  with  whom  one  can  have 
communion,  in  whose  life  one  can  to  some  degree  par¬ 
ticipate.  Here  again  I  discern  no  escape  from  the 
mystic’s  assertion,  if  it  be  granted  that  his  practical 
attitude  towards  evil  must  give  the  clue  to  the  theo¬ 
retical  solution.  Unless  there  is  Mind  at  the  heart  of 
the  universe  there  is  no  way  of  understanding  how  that 
universe  can  contain  evil  and  yet  be  good.  If  there  is 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


162 

a  God  whose  omnipotence  might  be  defined  as  being 
equal  to  any  emergency,  whose  insight  could  inter¬ 
pret  and  place  all  evil,  and  whose  passion  could  con¬ 
sume  and  transmute  it;  if,  further,  I  can  ally  myself 
with  Him  so  that  His  power  becomes  mine,  then  I  can 
see  how  the  universe’s  problem  and  mine  may  be 
solved.  And  this  is  the  victory  that  the  mystic  reports. 
He  has  become  one  with  the  God  who  is  in  the  world 
reconciling  it  unto  Himself.  Here  is  the  ground  of  his 
assurance.  The  mystic  alone  can  read  the  black  book 
of  pessimism  to  the  end,  burking  none  of  the  world’s 
tragedy  and  chaos,  and  still  retain  the  militant  ad¬ 
dress  towards  evil,  because  he  is  the  conscious  ally  of 
that  by  which  the  evil  may  be  conquered. 

I  have  been  chiefly  concerned  in  this  chapter  with 
optimism  as  one  of  the  contributions  of  mysticism  to 
the  conduct  of  life  and  with  elucidating  its  charac¬ 
teristic  quality.  If  in  the  last  two  paragraphs  I  have 
carried  the  exposition  into  the  region  of  the  ultimate 
problems  of  metaphysics,  it  is  not  with  any  intention 
of  suggesting  that  mysticism  has  given  a  finished  solu¬ 
tion  to  the  problem  of  evil.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  we  may 
claim  only  that  the  mystic  offers  suggestions  for  a  solu¬ 
tion.  He  has  not  made  philosophy  superfluous  in  this 
matter;  on  the  contrary,  he  has  made  it  necessary.  He 
has  set  a  task  for  philosophy,  for  he  does  not  expound 
his  interpretation  of  evil  so  much  as  live  it.  To  exhibit 
that  life  and  to  make  clear  some  of  its  theoretical  pre¬ 
suppositions  is  all  that  we  have  attempted  to  do. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


MYSTICISM  AND  FREEDOM 

THE  agonised  individual  conscience  of  Protestant¬ 
ism  is  no  longer  fashionable.  The  social  con¬ 
science  is  now  in  vogue.  But  we  shall  be  mistaken  if  we 
think  that  the  change  has  diminished  the  agonising. 
For  we  live  today  under  the  tyrannical  requirement 
of  an  ideal  of  ‘service.’  That  individual  is  unfortunate 
who  by  temperament  is  scrupulous  or  unconventional 
or  reflective  or  contemplative.  He  cannot  possess  his 
soul  in  peace,  for  he  is  assured  on  all  sides  that  he 
must  do  a  man’s  work  in  the  world :  he  must  be  efficient, 
he  must  realise  his  social  obligations.  He  is  asked  to 
think  continually  of  what  contribution  he  is  making 
towards  the  welfare  of  mankind,  the  happiness  of  fu¬ 
ture  generations,  or  the  saving  of  civilisation. 

One  need  not  doubt  the  value  of  these  ends,  but  one 
may  raise  the  question  whether  they  are  best  served  by 
being  thus  set  in  the  foreground  of  the  mind.  One  may 
be  so  eager  to  hit  the  bull’s  eye  that  one  misses  the  mark 
altogether,  and  one  may  be  so  preoccupied  with  the  de¬ 
sire  to  be  of  use  to  society  that  one  loses  the  opportunity 
to  do  what  one  was  best  fitted  to  perform.  If  we  fail 
thus  in  effectiveness  it  is  because  we  have  not  been  free 
to  be  honest  with  ourselves.  We  have  been  distracted 
by  that  too  urgent  and  insistent  demand  to  note  the 
social  consequences,  immediate  or  remote,  of  our  enter¬ 
prises.  We  have  been  nagged  into  diminishing  the 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


164 

scope  of  our  effort  from  the  breadth  of  its  original  dis¬ 
interestedness  to  suit  some  narrow  utilitarian  require¬ 
ment. 

Let  us  proceed  to  exhibit  the  consequences  in  some 
detail. 

Consider  first  the  case  of  the  artist  and  his  relation 
to  “the  public/’  It  is  a  platitude  to  observe  that  the 
artist  who  has  to  keep  his  weather  eye  open  for  the 
caprices  of  the  censor  or  for  the  more  popular  demand 
that  art  shall  be  didactic,  improving,  or  ‘wholesome,’ 
is  cramped  in  choice  of  subject  and  in  expression  and  is 
doomed  to  inferior  work.  But  even  the  more  general 
claim  that,  as  creative  artist,  his  inspiration  is  to  be 
determined  by  the  requirements,  however  important, 
of  any  audience,  contemporary  or  ideal,  is  open  to  the 
same  criticism.  True,  no  man  can  live  for  an  indefinite 
time  wholly  upon  his  own  moral  tissue,  happy  in  the 
approval  of  his  own  conscience,  without  appeal  to  his 
fellows,  to  posterity,  or  to  some  ideal  judge  of  his  per¬ 
formance.  But  such  social  approval  is  important  only 
as  the  test  of  work  done,  and  it  affects  the  artist’s 
evaluation  of  his  work  not  in  his  capacity  of  creative 
artist  but  in  his  capacity  of  philosopher  reflectively 
passing  judgment  upon  the  total  significance  of  his 
work.  As  artist  pure  and  simple  what  he  creates  and 
how  he  creates  it  must  be  a  matter  wholly  between  him¬ 
self  and  Beauty  as  he  apprehends  it.  Any  social 
obligation  cutting  across  that  major  loyalty  to  Beauty 
absolute  means  distraction  and  wasted  effort,  the  result 
of  which  will  be  not  (say)  poetry  but  propaganda  or 
rhetoric.  “We  make  out  of  the  quarrel  with  others, 


MYSTICISM  AND  FREEDOM 


165 


rhetoric;  but  out  of  the  quarrel  with  ourselves,  poetry.”1 
What  is  true  of  poetry  holds  good  of  the  other  arts — 
they  must  have  their  birth  in  freedom.  The  ultimate 
moral  and  social  consequences  of  such  art  can  be 
trusted  to  take  care  of  themselves. 

The  same  principle  is  valid  where  human  action  is 
quite  explicitly  concerned  with  social  benefit.  The  work 
of  doing  good  to  others  over  its  whole  range  from  the 
simplest  alleviation  of  human  misery  to  the  missionary 
ambition  of  saving  souls,  is  notoriously  a  difficult  and, 
for  the  most  part,  a  thankless  task.  The  reasons  for 
this  are  many,  but  some  of  them  spring  from  the  essen¬ 
tial  nature  of  the  relationship  involved  between  the 
doer  and  the  recipient  of  good.  It  is  with  these  that  we 
are  concerned. 

“If  I  knew  for  a  certainty,”  wrote  Thoreau,  “that  a 
man  was  coming  to  my  house  with  the  conscious  design 
of  doing  me  good,  I  should  run  for  my  life  as  from 
that  dry  and  parching  wind  of  the  African  deserts 
called  the  simoom,  which  fills  the  mouth  and  nose  and 
ears  and  eyes  with  dust  till  you  are  suffocated,  for  fear 
I  should  get  some  of  his  good  done  to  me, — some  of  its 
virus  mingled  with  my  blood.” 

“To  the  far  greater  number  of  average  common- 
sense  people  who  pride  themselves  on  a  freedom  from 
sentiment  and  mysticism,  the  eminently  practical  side 
of  Christ’s  spirit  will  make  a  strong  appeal.  .  .  .  His 
disdain  of  prophecy  and  miracle  and  of  any  other  pre- 

1  W.  B.  Yeats.  With  this  saying  one  may  compare  two  others  on 
the  same  subject.  “Rhetoric  is  heard,  poetry  is  overheard.”  “Rhetoric 
is  an  effort ;  poetry,  a  relief.” 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


1 66 

ternatural  criterion  of  discipleship  as  compared  with 
the  criterion  of  that  charity  of  experimental  goodness 
that  feeds  the  hungry  and  clothes  the  naked, — all  this 
and  much  more  makes  out  an  easy  and  most  plausible 
case  for  ‘Practicality/  Circuibat  benejaciendo:  He 
went  about  doing  good.  ‘Doing  Good’  seems  to  be  the 
whole  of  the  matter;  more  especially  that  sort  of  good 
that  involves  ‘going  about/  ”2 

The  thought  of  being  reformed  arouses  resentment 
on  two  grounds.  First,  self-respect  causes  us  to  regard 
such  intrusion  as  an  intolerable  impertinence.  I  may 
be  quite  alive  to  my  own  defects  and  to  the  need  of 
improvement,  but  that  is  an  affair  between  myself  and 
my  conscience  or  between  myself  and  my  Maker.  I 
do  not  propose  to  have  any  busybody,  however  excel¬ 
lent  his  intentions,  trespassing  there.  Secondly,  the 
would-be  reformer  is  guilty  of  presumptuousness.  Has 
he  no  failings  of  his  own  to  overcome  that  he  should 
feel  called  on  to  preach  to  others?  Let  him  first  remove 
the  beam  from  his  own  eye. 

These  criticisms  are  just.  But  we  cannot  be  content 
to  leave  the  matter  there,  discarding  all  attempts  at 
reform  or  altruism  as  misguided.  We  cannot  tell  each 
individual  to  ‘work  out  his  own  salvation  with  dili¬ 
gence/  For,  on  any  theory  of  life,  men  need  to  be 
‘saved/  and  it  is  precisely  those  who  most  need  it  who 
are  not  going  to  take  the  trouble  to  work  out  their  own 
salvation.  I  f  they  cared  enough  to  make  the  effort  they 
would  already  be  on  the  way  to  salvation.  There  must, 

2  George  Tyrrell,  Lex  Credendi,  p.  78. 


MYSTICISM  AND  FREEDOM  167 

then,  be  some  conditions  under  which  the  policy  of  re¬ 
forming  others  is  tolerable.  What  are  they? 

We  may  find  an  answer  by  considering  that  charge 
of  presumptuousness.  It  is  clear  that  if,  in  an  imperfect 
world,  we  wait  until  we  are  assured  of  our  own  blame¬ 
lessness  before  beginning  to  save  others  we  shall  never 
get  anything  done.  No  one  will  ever  be  ready  to  begin. 
In  the  end  therefore,  only  a  perfect  being,  not  subject 
to  human  limitations,  can  undertake  to  save  mankind. 
If,  then,  I  am  to  undertake  to  save  my  neighbour  I 
must  assume  a  divine  function.  But  so  to  define  my  pre¬ 
sumptuousness  is  to  take  away  its  hatefulness.  For  I 
now  act  vicariously,  as  God’s  representative,  not  as 
this  pathetic,  solitary,  puny  individual;  his  claims  I 
have  laid  aside  in  taking  on  the  universal  responsi¬ 
bility.  I  cease,  if  I  am  sincere,  to  suggest  by  my  bearing 
anything  superior  or  patronising.  Further,  I  now  ad¬ 
dress  myself  to  my  neighbour  not  as  to  some  self-suffi¬ 
cient  person  in  a  world  of  independent  selves,  each 
with  his  rights  and  his  sanctities  of  personal  boundary, 
but  as  to  one  who  in  the  presence  of  the  thought  of  God 
stands  on  the  same  level  with  myself  of  human  finitude 
and  sinfulness.  I  appeal  to  him  in  the  name  of  the 
God  who  is  his  God  and  mine.  Before  that  common 
(and  mutual?)  recognition  there  should  be  room  for 
nothing  but  humility. 

But  if  we  have  thus  expressed  the  sole  condition 
under  which  the  missionary  relationship  is  tolerable 
we  have  still  to  ask  what  it  is  that  leads  a  man  to  under¬ 
take  the  role  of  God’s  representative  in  the  work  of 
salvation.  The  answer  lies  in  the  character  we  have 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


1 68 

attributed  to  the  reformer.  We  have  said,  in  effect,  that 
he  must  first  be  prophet.  And  it  is  the  vision  of  God 
that  makes  the  prophet.  It  is  something  seen,  loved, 
and  adopted  in  the  way  of  truth,  beauty,  or  goodness, 
that  sends  the  prophet  looking  for  others  whom  he 
may  initiate  into  the  great  secret.  In  short  one  must  be 
an  evangel,  one  must  have  good  news,  before  one  can 
become  a  missionary  that  men  either  will  or  should 
listen  to. 

To  drop  the  language  of  theology  and  put  the  thing 
in  general  terms,  we  may  say  that  the  successful  re¬ 
formers  are  those  who  are  seeking  not  so  much  to 
‘make  people  good’  as  to  share  an  enthusiasm.  The 
change  they  may  work  in  others  is  a  by-product  of 
some  disinterested  devotion.  I  am  justified  in  attack¬ 
ing  my  neighbour’s  meanness  or  duplicity  only  in  so 
far  as  I  am  manifestly  inspired  by  a  love  of  generosity 
and  integrity.  My  efforts  can  then  be  interpreted  as  an 
attempt  to  recall  him  to  his  ideal  and  mine.  I  do  not 
plan  his  voyage,  I  merely  propose  to  correct  his  com¬ 
pass.  I  am  like  the  man  in  Plato’s  Allegory  of  the 
Cave  who  knew  that  his  chief  task  was  to  turn  the 
prisoners  round  so  that  they  could  face  in  the  direction 
of  the  sun.  The  sun  would  do  the  rest. 

As  a  final  illustration  of  the  necessity  for  freedom 
we  may  notice  how  the  conditions  of  the  moral  life  may 
themselves  become  barriers  to  moral  progress.  The  in¬ 
dividual  cannot,  even  if  he  would,  make  himself  in¬ 
dependent  of  the  customs,  the  institutions  and  the 
moral  code  of  his  society.  These  things  represent  for 
the  most  part  the  historical  deposit  of  generations  of 


MYSTICISM  AND  FREEDOM 


169 


experiment ;  they  sum  up  a  range  of  experience  and  re¬ 
flection  which  is  beyond  the  scope  of  the  individual, 
and  they  present  to  him,  if  not  finished  solutions,  at 
any  rate  suggestions  for  the  solution  of  the  major  prob¬ 
lems  of  conduct.  In  general,  then,  docility  and  con¬ 
formity  are  what  is  required  of  him.  This  means,  first, 
that  choice  is  limited.  The  main  paths  along  which  his 
various  instincts  and  impulses  may  seek  satisfaction 
are  already  laid  down:  there  are  so  many  careers,  so 
many  social  groupings — and  no  more.  Secondly,  since 
some  measure  of  visible  success  is  necessary  if  you  are 
to  persist  in  a  choice  once  made,  you  find  yourself  judg¬ 
ing  the  worth  of  your  work  and  of  yourself  by  the  cur¬ 
rent  social  standards.  You  find  yourself  constantly 
looking  up  from  your  work,  so  to  speak,  to  see  if  you 
are  making  progress,  fulfilling  your  obligations,  being 
a  good  citizen,  leaving  things  a  little  better  than  you 
found  them,  etc. 

Thus  society  furnishes  us  with  a  technique  and  with 
a  test,  and  these  things  are  necessary.  But  they  are  not 
sufficient.  Unum  fiorro  est  necessarium — inspiration 
or  initiative.  This  society  cannot  give.  The  attempt  to 
live  exclusively  in  the  light  of  the  strenuously  com¬ 
parative  estimate  of  one’s  value  ends  by  producing  a 
society  whose  marks  are  timidity,  conventionality,  and 
uniformity.  F'or  the  individual  it  means  at  worst  the 
suffocation  of  originality,  at  best  a  perpetual  uneasi¬ 
ness.  One  becomes  like  the  runner  who  continually 
looks  over  his  shoulder  at  the  other  competitors.  But 
the  way  to  run  a  good  race  is  to  keep  one’s  eye  on  the 
tape. 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


1 70 

In  the  end,  therefore,  both  the  private  and  the  public 
good  require  that  the  individual  shall  have  the  chance 
to  transcend  the  social  conditions  of  morality.  He  must 
be  free  to  discover  whatever  is  original  in  himself  and 
to  define  his  own  good  in  his  own  way.  He  will  con¬ 
tribute  nothing  that  society  will  be  interested  in  pre¬ 
serving  unless  he  can  from  time  to  time  shake  himself 
free  from  the  tyranny  of  all  external  requirements  and 
utilitarian  tests.  He  must  have  that  peace  of  mind 
which  comes  from  the  knowledge  that  he  may  address 
his  work  in  the  first  instance  to  the  ideal  judge  of  his 
own  and  other  men’s  effort. 

What  it  comes  to,  then,  is  this:  that  in  our  art,  in 
our  altruism,  our  problems  of  duty,  we  best  hit  the 
relative  by  aiming  at  the  absolute,  and  that  in  such 
recovery  of  direction  for  the  will  lies  the  hope  of  at¬ 
taining  a  creative  freedom.  I  have  used  the  term  ab¬ 
solute,  but  I  might  better  have  said  God,  for  how  else 
are  we  to  define  God  if  not  through  the  analysis  of 
those  experiences  which  lead  us  to  seek  Him?  God  is 
then  defined,  as  mysticism  would  define  Him,  as  the 
Being  who  unites  and  therefore  completes  the  mean¬ 
ings  of  the  diversified  forms  of  human  ambition.  If 
mysticism  be  the  search  for  God  in  this  sense  then  the 
hope  for  creative  freedom  lies  in  keeping  alive  and 
nourishing  the  mystical  impulse  in  us. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


MYSTICISM  AND  INSTITUTIONS 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  we  gave  a  sketch  of  free¬ 
dom  in  its  general  meaning  of  freedom  from  the 
oppressive  requirements  of  social  usefulness  in  deter¬ 
mining  the  direction  of  the  individual  will.  It  may 
help  to  fill  in  some  of  the  details  of  that  picture  if  we 
consider  the  social  pressure  as  it  bears  upon  the  in¬ 
dividual  through  the  demands  of  the  institution,  eccle¬ 
siastical,  political,  economic,  etc. 

We  may  begin  by  passing  in  review  a  number  of 
criticisms  which  are  frequently  brought  against  the 
very  principle  of  organisation  itself,  irrespective  of  the 
special  forms  in  which  it  may  be  manifested. 

Organisation  destroys  freshness  and  spontaneity. 
For  the  direct  and  personal  relationship  between  the 
individual  and  his  fellows  or  between  the  individual 
and  God  is  substituted  one  indirect  and  general.  It  is 
true  that  the  institution  may  universalise  any  particu¬ 
lar  relation,  but  it  also  classifies  it  and  thereby  seems 
to  rob  it  of  its  uniqueness.  The  effect  of  marriage  is 
to  transform  ‘‘I  and  thou”  into  "man  and  wife,”  and 
this,  while  it  may  mean  gain,  means  also  loss.  Mar¬ 
riage  makes  these  two  into  types,  sets  them  over  against 
each  other  in  formal  guise,  puts  them  in  some  sense  in 
the  same  class  with  all  other  married  people.  If  mar¬ 
riage  wears  away  love  one  reason  is  that  the  social 
mask  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  So-and-So  has  a  way  of  per- 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


1 72 

manently  concealing  the  original  features.  So  with  the 
religious  institution.  One  need  not  elaborate  the  fa¬ 
miliar  record :  with  the  growth  of  ecclesiastical  or¬ 
ganisation  and  systems  of  dogma  the  early  enthusiasm 
of  religion  first  dwindles  and  then  disappears.  The 
natural  gestures  of  the  spirit  give  way  to  a  formal 
ritual,  the  immediate  convictions  of  personal  insight 
harden  into  an  authoritative  creed,  the  distinctive 
movements  of  the  religious  impulse  become  uniform 
and  automatic. 

In  the  second  place,  the  life  of  every  institution  de¬ 
pends  upon  the  willingness  of  its  supporters  to  com¬ 
promise.  Property,  the  state,  the  church,  may  be  neces¬ 
sary  for  completeness  of  life,  yet,  as  no  one  of  these  is 
perfect,  any  alliance  with  them  involves  a  threat  to 
one’s  wholeness  of  mind.  For,  whatever  ideas  or 
dreams  we  may  have  of  the  institution  as  it  might  be, 
we  must,  if  we  are  to  be  effective,  serve  the  institution 
as  it  actually  is,  and  we  cannot  have  the  good  of  the 
institution  without  being  partners  in  the  bad.  We  can¬ 
not  use  money  and  escape  the  implications  of  the  fact 
that  “all  money  is  tainted  money.”  We  cannot  accept 
parts  of  the  industrial  system  and  escape  complicity 
with  the  rest.  There  is  no  political  loyalty  which  will 
not  commit  us  to  hateful  persons  and  hateful  princi¬ 
ples.  No  matter  how  valiantly  we  profess  our  will  to 
“reform  the  institution  from  within”  we  may  not  avoid 
the  infection  of  the  institution  as  it  is.  If  the  price  of 
personal  immaculateness  is  the  complete  detachment 
of  the  hermit’s  cell,  the  price  of  attachment  to  the  in¬ 
stitutions  of  society  is  the  loss  of  personal  integrity. 


MYSTICISM  AND  INSTITUTIONS 


173 


Third,  the  career  of  any  institution  exhibits  the  fa¬ 
miliar  process  in  which  a  means  comes  to  be  taken  as 
an  end  in  itself.  That  which  was  to  bring  men  nearer  to 
the  goal  becomes  itself  the  goal.  Every  liberator  be¬ 
comes  a  despot.  The  state,  assuming  a  final  and  com¬ 
prehensive  authority,  proclaims :  Thou  shalt  have  none 
other  gods  but  me.  Political  allegiance  comes  forth 
clothed  as  a  religion.  The  church  which  was  to  save 
men  becomes  a  monopoly  and  announces :  Extra  eccle - 
siam  nulla  salus.  The  meaning  of  property  is  forgotten 
and  its  rights  are  treated  as  sacred  and  inviolable.  In 
short,  no  institution  seems  able  to  retain  its  soul  for 
long  and,  losing  its  soul,  it  degenerates  into  a  body  of 
death. 

This  brings  us  to  the  last  criticism  that  we  need  men¬ 
tion.  The  institution  comes  in  time  to  own  its  members 
instead  of  being  owned  by  them.  It  is  a  common  thing 
to  see  a  woman  who  believes  that  she  runs  her  house 
when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  she  is  fast  bound  to  the 
wheels  of  the  domestic  machinery,  or  to  see  a  man  who 
thinks  he  owns  his  automobile  but  is  in  truth  owned 
by  it.  John  Galsworthy  in  his  novel,  The  Man  of  Prop¬ 
erty,  has  shown  how  the  love  of  property  may  so  domi¬ 
nate  a  man  that  it  becomes  indeed  his  God — the  one 
thing  he  cannot  dispense  with,  and  Samuel  Butler  in 
The  Way  of  All  Flesh  reveals  the  power  of  the  idea 
of  the  family  to  make  men  its  slaves.  This  is  what 
Christianity  seems  to  have  dreaded  about  the  complex 
forms  of  social  organisation:  they  had  a  way  of  not 
only  claiming  but  winning  an  allegiance  which  turned 
their  servants  into  slaves.  “He  that  loveth  father  or 


174 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


mother  more  than  me  .  .  These  lesser  loyalties 
were  to  be  held  subordinate  to  the  major  loyalty  of 
religion. 

It  is  manifest  that  all  these  criticisms  have  a  common 
direction.  They  emphasise  in  different  ways  the  tend¬ 
ency  of  human  organisations  to  become  mechanical 
and  in  consequence  to  create  in  their  members  a  me¬ 
chanical  way  of  thinking  and  behaving.  Thus  the  or¬ 
ganisation  impedes  and  may  arrest  the  growth  of 
personality.  It  suppresses  originality,  impairs  the 
power  of  independent  judgment,  elicits  a  type  of  slav¬ 
ish  obedience,  and  obscures  from  men  their  real  pur¬ 
poses  and  satisfactions. 

All  these  criticisms  are  summed  up  in  the  attitude 
of  the  mystic.  In  his  career  we  see  a  cultivation  of  that 
kind  of  originality  and  self-reliance  which  comes  from 
being  alone  with  God — a  temper  of  mind  dangerous 
enough  to  the  docility  required  by  the  institution.  He 
has  discovered  a  source  of  new  values  which  makes  him 
turn  a  penetrating  gaze  upon  all  established  things, 
and  his  conviction  that  he  has,  as  it  were,  God  behind 
him  to  confirm  him  in  his  independence,  generates  an 
impatience  with  all  forms  of  social  discipline.  No  man 
can  undertake,  as  the  mystic  undertakes,  the  task  of 
discovering  what  his  deepest  purpose  is  and  of  making 
over  his  life  in  the  light  of  that  discovery  without  be¬ 
coming  the  most  difficult  radical  of  all  to  deal  with,  the 
radical  who  confronts  the  existing  order  not  with  the 
intent  of  pure  destruction  but  with  a  new  standard  of 
what  human  nature  really  needs.  In  effect  the  mystic 
says  to  society:  Here  I  stand  with  my  own  vision  of 


MYSTICISM  AND  INSTITUTIONS 


175 


truth,  my  own  ideal  of  human  destiny,  my  own  power 
of  judgment — all  these  conferred  upon  me,  if  you  like, 
not  earned,  but  still  mine.  If  you  are  to  justify  your¬ 
self  you  must  find  a  place  for  me  and  for  others  like 
me.  How  many  institutions  can  stand  the  test?  Must 
they  not  look  upon  the  spirit  of  such  a  challenge  as  so 
much  insubordination  or  rebellion? 

This  attitude  comes  out  most  clearly  in  the  mystic’s 
judgment  upon  the  ecclesiastical  institution.  The 
church  proposes  to  furnish  men  with  the  means  to  some 
total  good,  ‘salvation’;  it  will  mediate  between  man 
and  God.  To  the  mystic  this  looks  like  denying  the 
possibility  of  an  immediate  relation  to  God.  But  he 
insists  upon  the  possibility  and  necessity  of  a  personal 
discovery  of  God  and  a  personal  assurance  of  salva¬ 
tion.  He  refuses  to  admit  that  a  church  can  monopolise 
the  channels  of  revelation;  he  will  not  believe  that  the 
accumulated  wisdom  of  the  priesthood  contains  all  that 
the  human  soul  need  know.  Thus  he  is  at  once  the 
democrat  and  the  pioneer  of  the  religious  life:  the 
democrat,  because  he  believes  that  any  individual  may 
receive  “revelation,”  the  pioneer,  because  he  believes 
in  exploring  the  problems  of  his  destiny  for  himself. 
From  both  points  of  view  he  appears  as  the  individual¬ 
ist  critic  of  the  institution,  for  he  is  definitely  com¬ 
mitted  to  the  idea  that  the  social  technique  represented 
by  the  institution  is  not  adequate. 

We  have  noted  how  any  institution  tends  in  time  to 
take  its  own  continued  existence  as  intrinsically  valu¬ 
able.  It  is  at  this  tendency  that  the  mystics  generally 
strike.  Their  comment  upon  all  forms  of  social  organi- 


176 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


sation  is  that  these  are,  or  should  be,  means  to  human 
well-being.  Since  they  claim  to  have  had  an  anticipa¬ 
tory  experience  of  this  ultimate  good  they  can  look 
back  upon  institutional  life  as  so  much  preliminary 
discipline  or  training.  The  unmistakeable  mark  of 
the  mystic  is  that  he  is  the  enlightened  one :  he  claims 
to  know  what  human  beings  are  groping  after  in  their 
various  social  devices,  and  so  he  looks  upon  their  ef¬ 
forts  partly  with  disparagement,  partly  with  indul¬ 
gence,  as  anyone  who  has  achieved  the  results  of  disci¬ 
pline  looks  upon  that  discipline — as  a  thing  necessary, 
of  course,  but  still  subordinate.  The  quality  and  mean¬ 
ing  of  this  ‘superiority’  have  been  dwelt  on  in  an 
earlier  chapter;  here  we  need  only  point  out  how  it 
acts  as  a  corrective  to  that  tendency  among  the  guardi¬ 
ans  and  the  supporters  of  institutions  to  become  self- 
important  and  self-sufficient.  Every  institution  needs 
to  be  recalled  to  a  sense  of  its  relations  with  the  rest 
of  life,  to  be  reminded  of  the  fact  that  men  cannot 
spend  all  their  lives  learning  and  that  the  final  aim 
of  all  discipline  is  to  confer  freedom.  “Love  God  and 
do  as  you  please,”  with  its  corollary  that  the  law  and 
every  other  institution  is  a  schoolmaster,  may  be  dan¬ 
gerous  doctrine,  but  it  is  often  sane  and  necessary  doc¬ 
trine  to  throw  at  the  persons  of  our  mandarins,  politi¬ 
cal,  economic,  or  ecclesiastical. 

We  have  been  attempting  to  bring  out,  with  perhaps 
exaggerated  emphasis,  the  opposition,  or  at  least  the 
contrast,  between  mysticism  and  institutional  life.  It 
is  better  to  paint  the  differences  too  strongly  than  to 
slur  them  over.  And  we  may  express  the  truth  of  the 


MYSTICISM  AND  INSTITUTIONS 


1 77 


situation  in  this  way:  the  opposition  is  real,  but  not 
final;  mysticism  is  beyond  institutions  but  not  neces¬ 
sarily  hostile  to  them.  Aristotle  remarked  that  the 
being  who  can  dispense  with  the  state  must  be  either  a 
beast  or  a  god;  the  mystic  in  dispensing  after  his 
fashion  with  all  institutions  is  certainly  making  claims 
to  divinity,  but  that  does  not  expose  him  to  the  charge 
of  ‘insolence/  for  the  divine  is  here  not  the  negation 
but  the  completion  of  the  human.  To  put  the  matter 
differently :  what  the  mystic  rejects  is  not  the  claim  that 
the  established  forms  of  social  life  are  necessary  for  a 
complete  life  but  the  claim  that  they  are  sufficient. 

We  may  therefore  sum  up  what  is  valid  in  the  mysti¬ 
cal  criticism  as  follows.  There  is  a  type  of  mind — radi¬ 
cal,  independent,  Socratic — which  the  institution  does 
not  and  cannot  produce.  Yet  while  it  cannot  produce, 
it  can  and  must  make  use  of,  the  radical.  Its  very  life 
depends  on  so  doing.  The  reasons  for  this  are  obvious. 
It  cannot  generate  the  radical  virtues,  for  its  object  is, 
quite  simply,  to  conserve  whatever  is  of  tested  worth  in 
human  experience.  It  is  an  instrument  of  continuity 
which  carries  over  from  the  past  into  the  present  the 
permanently  valuable  results  of  thinking  and  experi¬ 
ment.  It  represents,  ideally  at  any  rate,  the  funded 
social  knowledge  into  which  all  novelties  must  be 
worked  if  they  are  to  be  preserved  at  all.  Institutions 
are  therefore  by  nature  conservative  and  the  virtues 
which  they  encourage  are  docility  and  loyalty.  They 
offer  no  favourable  soil  for  the  growth  of  critics  and 
possible  rebels.  Yet  none  the  less  they  must  use  such 
minds,  for  to  cut  themselves  off  from  the  sources  of 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


178 

criticism  and  novelty  is  to  condemn  themselves  to 
stagnation  or  death.  Their  aim  is  to  conserve ;  but  what 
shall  they  conserve  if  it  be  not  whatever  is  fruitful  in 
experiment?  What  they  need  is  intelligent  servants, 
not  machines;  an  alert  regard  for  human  rights,  not 
slavishness.  For  those  who  are  to  sustain  their  life  they 
must  go  outside  their  own  barriers.  A  specific  illustra¬ 
tion  may  make  these  considerations  less  abstract.  The 
exigencies  of  domestic  order  in  time  of  war  revealed 
a  common  doctrine  about  the  state:  that  it  is  an  asso¬ 
ciation  for  conduct  and  not  for  belief.  On  this  basis  we 
should  give  dissenters,  whether  religious  or  political, 
short  shrift ;  we  should  impose  an  enforced  silence  upon 
minorities.  State  action,  we  might  declare  with  Bo- 
sanquet,  covers  that  region  where  the  getting  of  a  thing 
done  is  more  important  than  the  motives  from  which 
it  is  done.  But  how  long  a  tenure  of  life  can  we  pre¬ 
dict  for  a  state  so  conceived?  Its  length  of  life  will  be 
measured  by  its  power  of  compulsion.  Such  is  not  the 
ideal  of  a  democratic  state.  If  the  test  of  a  democracy 
be  its  treatment  of  minorities  that  is,  first,  because  the 
democratic  state  is  theoretically  regarded  as  embody¬ 
ing  the  real  will  of  its  citizens  and  as  being  therefore 
an  association  for  belief  as  well  as  conduct,  and,  sec¬ 
ondly,  because  the  only  agreement  worth  having  is 
that  of  men  who  possess  the  right  to  differ.  The  man 
who  weakly  echoes  my  sentiments  or  opinions  does  not 
provide  me  with  a  victory  in  argument,  but  only  he 
who  knows  his  own  mind  and  who  has  a  mind  of  his 
own  to  know.  “The  only  joy  I  have  in  him  is  that  the 


MYSTICISM  AND  INSTITUTIONS 


179 


not-mine  is  mine.”  The  men  whose  loyalty  the  state 
must  seek  to  enlist  if  it  is  not  to  go  the  way  of  all 
arbitrary  powers  are  those  who  have  refused  to  be 
brow-beaten  by  the  cudgels  of  the  tyrants  of  society 
confessed  and  unconfessed.  If  it  be  true  that  the  state 
needs  ‘'enlightened  patriotism”  then  that  means  that 
the  state  depends  for  its  continued  existence  upon 
those  who  have  struck  out  for  themselves  into  a  region 
where  political  loyalties  are  forgotten.  And  what  is 
true  of  the  state  is  true  of  other  institutions.  The  in¬ 
dividual  conscience  is  the  spot  of  variation  in  the  moral 
world :  it  is  the  lonely  pioneers  who  have  lifted  the 
general  level  of  the  social  judgment.  And  to  say  that 
pioneers  have  often  brought  back  false  reports  of  the 
promised  land  is  not  here  relevant.  Some  of  them  at 
least  have  brought  back  true  reports — that  is  the  essen¬ 
tial  thing  for  the  loyal  servants  of  the  institution  to 
remember.  One  true  prophet  is  enough  to  justify  the 
liberty  of  prophesying. 

Thus  the  state,  the  church,  the  family,  need  mem¬ 
bers  who  in  serving  these  serve  at  the  same  time  an 
end  beyond  them.  The  alternative  is  to  take  the  in¬ 
stitution  as  an  end  in  itself  and  so  to  destroy  its  pliancy 
and  its  capacity  for  growth.  I  suppose  it  may  be  said 
that  no  man  has  shown  that  he  really  values  a  thing 
until  he  has  proved  his  ability  to  do  without  it.  To 
surrender  a  treasure  without  bitterness  is  the  final  test 
of  love’s  sincerity.  That  test,  with  regard  to  all  the 
recognised  goods  of  life,  the  mystic  imposes  on  him¬ 
self — anc l  survives.  The  institution  which  affects  to  see 


i8o 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


in  him  an  enemy  is  excommunicating  one  who  is  fitted 
to  keep  it  in  touch  with  the  renewing  sources  of  its 
own  life. 


CHAPTER  XV 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MYSTICISM* 

IN  our  introductory  chapter  we  described  some  of 
the  factors  responsible  for  the  disfavour  with  which 
mysticism  is  now  regarded.  That  account  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  needs  to  be  modified.  While  it  is  true  that  there  is 
little  scope  or  liking  for  professedly  religious  mysti¬ 
cism,  nevertheless  the  mystical  temper  of  mind  still  in¬ 
forms  many  human  activities  and  the  mystical  type  of 
relief  is  still  sought  and  found.  If  mysticism  is  not 
conspicuous  on  the  surface  of  life  today  that  is  not  be¬ 
cause  man’s  need  for  it  is  less  than  ever  before,  but  be¬ 
cause  much  of  its  historic  work  is  being  performed  by 
other  means.  It  is  as  though  the  religious  impulse 
which  in  mysticism  appears  undivided  had  become 
distributed  among  a  number  of  secular  channels  and 
so  lost  its  identity. 

The  romantic  discovery  of  Nature,  for  example,  has 
disclosed  something  like  an  equivalent  for  worship. 
Nature,  to  whatever  is  over-civilised  and  sophisticated 
in  us,  appears  as  that  which  is  at  once  Primitive  and 
Real,  and  the  original  without  us  evokes  the  original 
that  is  within.  The  mind  that  has  begun  to  perceive  the 
vanity  and  vexation  of  unending  strenuosity  learns, 
under  the  influence  of  the  silent  ease  of  the  natural 
powers,  to  cultivate  “a  wise  passiveness.”  The  superb 

*  In  this  chapter  I  have  used  parts  of  an  article  on  Art  as  an 
Antidote  for  Morality  which  appeared  in  The  International  Journal 
of  Ethics,  Jan.  1920. 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


182 

indifference  of  Nature  to  all  human  ends  and  distinc¬ 
tions,  an  indifference  which  yet  does  not  seem  to  shut 
us  out  from  a  kind  of  communion  with  her,  enables  one 
to  set  those  ends  and  distinctions  in  a  proper  perspec¬ 
tive.  For  all  these  reasons  Nature  has  come  to  serve 
as  an  equivalent — to  many  an  all-sufficient  equivalent 
— of  the  God  of  religion. 

As  for  the  way  in  which  the  appreciation  of  Art, 
especially  of  Music  and  Poetry,  may  perform  a  similar 
function,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  give  one  contemporary 
illustration  that  we  may  take  as  typical. 

The  essential  charm  of  all  poetry,  for  the  sake  of  which, 
in  the  last  resort,  it  exists,  lies  in  its  power  of  inducing, 
satisfying,  and  regulating  what  may  be  called  Transcenden¬ 
tal  Feeling,  especially  that  form  of  Transcendental  Feeling 
which  manifests  itself  as  solemn  sense  of  Timeless  Being — 
of  “That  which  was,  and  is,  and  ever  shall  be,”  overshadow¬ 
ing  us  with  its  presence.  .  .  .  Transcendental  Feeling  I 
would  explain  genetically  ...  by  the  persistence  in  us  of 
that  primeval  condition  from  which  we  are  sprung,  when 
life  was  still  as  sound  asleep  as  Death,  and  there  was  no 
Time  yet.  That  we  should  fall  for  a  while,  now  and  then, 
from  our  waking  time-marking  life,  into  the  timeless  slum¬ 
ber  of  this  primeval  life  is  easy  to  understand ;  for  the  prin¬ 
ciple  solely  operative '  in  that  primeval  life  is  indeed  the 
fundamental  principle  of  our  nature,  being  that  Vegetative 
Part  of  the  soul  which  made  from  the  first,  and  still  silently 
makes,  the  assumption  on  which  our  whole  rational  life  of 
conduct  and  science  rests — the  assumption  that  life  is  worth 
living.1 

It  is  clear  that  today  we  are  finding  new  and  varied 

1  J.  A.  Stewart,  The  Myths  of  Plato,  pp.  22,  39. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MYSTICISM 


183 


methods  of  restoring  that  equilibrium  of  the  mind 
which  historic  mysticism  has  undertaken  to  bring 
about.  And  we  are  thus  confronted  with  the  question 
whether,  as  we  learn  to  multiply  and  master  these 
modes,  we  may  not  altogether  outgrow  the  need  for 
religious  mysticism. 

I  propose  to  limit  the  consideration  of  this  topic  by 
confining  myself  to  the  aesthetic  experience,  partly  be¬ 
cause  its  claims  in  this  matter  are  the  most  important, 
partly  because  this  offers  the  most  convenient  means  of 
bringing  forward  such  tentative  suggestions  as  I  have 
to  offer. 

It  has  often  been  observed  that  in  experiencing 
beauty  we  enter  a  region  in  which  the  tasks  and  the 
judgments  of  the  moral  life  have  ceased,  for  the  time 
being  at  least,  to  concern  us.  For  Art,  in  giving  us  that 
which  is  individual,  the  universal  in  and  through  the 
particular,  presents  to  us  a  rendering  of  things  in 
some  sense  finished  and  complete.  We  may  share  the 
passion  of  Lady  Macbeth  and  feel  the  guilt  of  her  hus¬ 
band,  but  we  are  not  asked  to  condemn  or  to  approve, 
we  need  not  take  sides,  nothing  has  to  be  done  about  it. 
All  our  feelings  are  subordinated  to  the  major  emotion 
of  aesthetic  satisfaction,  and  the  power  and  beauty  of 
the  whole  composition  induce  a  consciousness  of  unity 
which  is  able  to  contain  within  itself  the  moral  dis¬ 
traction.  This  is  the  element  of  truth  in  those  theories 
of  Art  as  an  escape.  Here  also  we  must  seek  whatever 
is  valid  in  the  cries  of  Art  for  Art’s  sake  or  Art  beyond 
good  or  evil.  The  critics  of  Art,  on  the  other  hand, 
from  Plato  onwards,  have  found  it  hard  to  believe  that 


1 84 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


the  figures  created  by  the  artist  are  not  set  up  as  exam¬ 
ples,  or  at  any  rate  that  they  will  not  produce  a  crowd 
of  imitators.  The  censorious  have  insisted  that  the 
beautiful  must  conform  to  the  standards  of  morality. 
They  cannot  be  convinced  that  it  is  no  part  of  the 
artist's  function  or  intention  to  edify  or  to  instruct. 
And  this  in  spite  of  the  artist’s  deliverances.  “The 
drama,  like  the  symphony,”  wrote  Synge,  “does  not 
teach  or  prove  anything.  Analysts  with  their  problems, 
and  teachers  with  their  systems,  are  soon  as  old- 
fashioned  as  the  pharmacopoeia  of  Galen, — look  at 
Ibsen  and  the  Germans, — but  the  best  plays  of  Ben 
Jonson  and  Moliere  can  no  more  go  out  of  fashion 
than  the  blackberries  on  the  hedges.  .  .  .  The  drama  is 
made  serious — in  the  French  sense  of  the  word — not 
by  the  degree  in  which  it  is  taken  up  with  problems 
that  are  serious  in  themselves,  but  by  the  degree  in 
which  it  gives  the  nourishment,  not  very  easy  to  define, 
on  which  our  imaginations  live.”2  In  the  world  of  the 
imagination  no  verdicts  are  prescribed:  anything  is 
possible.  We  shall  find  a  Mephistopheles  sublime, 
while  the  rogues  and  the  villains  and  the  other  moral 
outcasts  shall  so  appear  as  to  make  us  cry  out 

Excellent  wretch !  Perdition  catch  my  soul, 

But  I  do  love  thee ! 

The  mind  is  set  free  to  play.  The  facile  distinctions 
of  everyday  living  are  washed  out  and  all  our  habits 
of  judgment  are  in  abeyance.  We  recapture  innocence 
at  some  higher  level  of  the  mind. 

2  Preface  to  The  Tinker’s  Wedding. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MYSTICISM 


185 


Yet  we  need  not  be  accused  of  underestimating  the 
value  of  that  nourishing  of  the  imagination  of  which 
Synge  speaks  if  we  recall  at  this  point  the  historic  stub¬ 
born  antagonism  of  the  moralist  to  beauty.  And  it  is 
safe  to  assume  that  what  goes  by  the  name  of  Puri¬ 
tanism  has  its  roots  in  human  instincts  or  feelings 
which  have  a  wisdom  of  their  own.  Following  up  this 
clue,  then,  let  us  ask  what  is  the  real  danger  to  religion 
and  morals  in  Beauty,  the  danger  of  which  the  Puritan 
is  aware,  though  he  may  not  be  able  to  define  it?  It  lies, 
I  believe,  in  the  tendency  of  the  aesthetic  experience  to 
become  self-contained.  We  have  emphasised  above  the 
serenity  of  the  typical  work  of  art,  pointing  out  that  if 
it  does  not  lull  to  sleep  neither  can  it  be  said  to  awaken 
the  moral  impulse  in  us;  but  that  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  beauty  casts  a  spell  upon  us:  it  tempts 
us  to  remain  within  its  own  charmed  circle,  it  lures  us 
to  a  profounder  absorption,  a  deeper  trance. 

Here  will  I  dwell,  for  Heaven  is  in  these  lips, 

And  all  is  dross  that  is  not  Helena. 

Such  hypnotic  effects  do  not,  it  is  true,  fall  within  the 
scope  of  the  artist's  intention,  but  that  they  are  often 
produced  by  the  work  of  art  it  would  be  difficult  to 
deny.  The  joys  and  pleasures  of  beauty  are  so  ravishing 
that  they  tend  to  make  one  forget  everything  but  them¬ 
selves.  The  nourishing  of  the  imagination,  the  height¬ 
ening  of  vital  energies, — these  have  a  way  of  being 
forgotten.  We  start  by  being  lovers  of  beauty;  we  end 
by  being  hedonists.  If  anyone  doubts  this,  let  him  con¬ 
sider  how  again  and  again  in  history  the  defenders  of 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


1 86 

beauty  have  harked  back  to  the  theory  that  the  work 
of  art  exists  only  to  give  enjoyment. 

Now  the  claim  to  such  finality  in  experience  is  one 
which  neither  the  religious  nor  the  moral  sense  can 
tolerate.  It  is  good  for  man  to  touch  a  point  beyond 
good  or  evil,  to  lay  hold,  as  it  were  by  anticipation, 
upon  that  which  is  absolutely  satisfying,  but  such  an 
ultimate  is  no  place  for  a  mortal  to  stay  at.  This  finality 
is,  after  all,  a  premature  finality,  and  Beauty  in  the 
place  of  the  absolute  good  is  a  usurper.  If  the  religious 
man,  then,  distrusts  art  as  a  substitute  for  religion  it 
is  because  art  offers  too  many  temptations  in  the  way 
of  enjoyment  to  human  ambition,  because  it  may  too 
easily  become  an  Island  of  Circe  to  which  men  go  but 
from  which  they  do  not  return. 

I  have  stated  this  contention  with  dogmatic  assur¬ 
ance.  But  I  am  aware  that  to  many  people  it  will  seem 
like  a  travesty  of  the  aesthetic  experience  to  describe 
it  as  self-contained.  Plato  observed,  and  many  after 
him  have  confirmed  him,  that  beauty  generates  an  im¬ 
pulse  in  the  observer  to  create  after  its  kind.  Once  the 
soul  had  become  possessed  by  the  love  of  beauty  it 
would  feel  the  necessity  of  making  over  all  the  ways 
of  life  to  conform  to  the  image  stamped  upon  it.  Love 
and  virtue  would  be  so  many  expressions  of  this  master¬ 
ful  need.  And  experience  seems  to  bear  out  this  asser¬ 
tion.  “In  the  rush  and  roar  of  the  stormy  wind,”  writes 
Richard  Jefferies,  “the  same  exaltation,  the  same  de¬ 
sire,  lifted  me  for  a  moment.  I  went  there  every  morn¬ 
ing,  I  could  not  exactly  define  why;  it  was  like  going 
to  a  rose  bush  to  taste  the  scent  of  the  flower  and  feel 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MYSTICISM 


187 


the  dew  from  its  petals  on  the  lips.  But  I  desired  the 
beauty — the  inner  subtle  meaning — to  be  in  me,  that  I 
might  have  it,  and  with  it  an  existence  of  a  higher 
kind.  .  .  .  After  the  sensuous  enjoyment  always  came 
the  thought,  the  desire:  That  I  might  be  like  this;  that 
I  might  have  the  inner  meaning  of  the  sun,  the  light, 
the  earth,  the  trees  and  grass,  translated  into  some 
growth  of  excellence  in  myself,  both  of  body  and  mind ; 
greater  perfection  of  physique,  greater  perfection  of 
mind  and  soul;  that  I  might  be  higher  in  myself.”3 

But  can  life  be  securely  organised  about  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  beauty  ?  Are  the  ideas  of  order,  harmony,  sym¬ 
metry,  sufficient  to  establish  the  moral  and  the  social 
and  the  political  structures? 

We  may  be  helped  towards  an  answer  by  analysing 
a  particular  example.  Let  us  imagine  a  state  that  is 
held  together,  neither  by  force  nor  by  blind  loyalty,  but 
by  the  fascination  exercised  upon  all  the  members  by 
a  political  structure  which,  in  its  perfect  subordination 
of  parts  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole,  embodies  the 
essentials  of  a  beautiful  composition.  At  the  top  of  the 
pyramid  set  a  group  of  full  citizens,  free  to  enjoy  their 
power  and  their  culture;  at  the  base,  a  crowd  of  slaves. 
If  beauty  be  the  presiding  influence  there  need  be  no 
murmuring,  no  rebellion,  no  vulgar  climbing  and 
pushing  on  the  one  hand,  no  condescension  and  no  so¬ 
cial  ‘uplift’  on  the  other.  To  each  is  allotted  the  place 
to  which  it  has  pleased  God,  Nature,  and  the  principle 
of  Beauty  to  call  him.  All  alike,  but  especially  the 

3  The  Story  of  My  Heart. 


188  A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 

slaves,  can  enjoy  that  perfect  freedom  which  is — serv¬ 
ice. 

Such  a  state  is  beautiful,  beautiful  as  the  compli¬ 
cated  evolutions  of  well-drilled  troops  are  beautiful. 
But  it  has  obvious  defects. 

In  the  first  place,  it  will  last  only  so  long  as  men 
prefer  the  beauty  of  being  well  drilled  to  everything 
else.  But  men  want  other  things  besides  beauty;  shall 
we  not  say  that  justice  is  one  of  them?  Should  we  set 
it  down  wholly  to  meanness  and  ugliness  and  envious¬ 
ness  of  spirit  if  a  slave  in  this  state  should  spot  the 
contrast  between  the  freedom  which  his  service  is  said 
to  have  won  for  him  and  that  of  the  classes  so  far  above 
him?  Should  we  blame  him  if,  feeling,  as  even  slaves 
will  do,  that  he  had  greater  things  in  him,  he  should 
be  moved  to  protest  at  a  system  which  in  practice  iden¬ 
tified  accident  with  the  decrees  of  beauty  or  provi¬ 
dence?  Yet  we  know  how  his  protests  would  be  re¬ 
ceived  :  as  symptoms  not  so  much  of  political  heresy  as 
of  bad  form.  He  is  disturbing  a  beautiful  equilibrium, 
marring  a  beautiful  integrity.  We  know  the  type  of 
response  only  too  well  in  our  own  time.  There  is  no 
criticism,  no  protest,  and  no  rebellion,  however  justi¬ 
fied  in  morals,  that  cannot  be  dismissed  with  the  cry 
that  this  is  an  offence  against  law  and  order  and  that 
the  lower  classes  should  be  taught  to  know  their  place. 
Nice,  respectable  people  have  no  patience  with  dis¬ 
content  and  evil  passions, — they  are  so  ugly.  At  all 
costs  we  must  avoid  “a  scene.” 

The  same  weakness  which  disqualifies  beauty  as  a 
principle  of  political  consolidation  is  revealed  else- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MYSTICISM  189 

where.  A  social  group  which  prides  itself  upon  an 
achieved  harmony,  which  takes  a  proper  delight  in 
the  ready  mutual  understanding,  the  amiability,  and 
the  geniality  which  surround  it  like  a  warm  air,  will 
hesitate  long  before  admitting  one  who  may  not  be  “a 
kindred  soul.”  Within  such  a  group  the  judgment  of 
taste  will  quickly  take  the  place  of  the  moral  judg¬ 
ment.  But  the  judgment  of  taste  tends  to  become  stereo¬ 
typed,  recognising  only  those  things  which  conform  to 
its  own  rather  arbitrary  standards.  It  determines  the 
mind  to  exclusions  which  are  hard  to  overcome.  Have¬ 
lock  Ellis  somewhere  says  that  real  democracy  will  not 
be  possible  until  men  have  achieved  common  standards 
of  cleanliness.  If  a  man  doesn’t  wash  it  is  hard,  for 
the  godly  at  least,  to  believe  in  his  virtues.  (Unless, 
of  course,  he  be  a  mediaeval  saint.  But  then  his  odour, 
being  merely  a  matter  of  historic  record,  is  no  longer 
offensive.)  What  a  weight  of  moral  disapproval  may 
we  not  import  into  the  words,  ‘A  dirty  little  unwashed 
specimen!’  And  the  same  is  true  if  we  substitute  the 
more  genteel  terms  “philistine,”  “barbarian,”  “impos¬ 
sible  outsider.”  They  perform  the  work  of  social  ostra¬ 
cism  just  as  effectively  as  their  coarser  equivalents. 

As  with  the  organisation  of  social  life,  so  with  that 
of  the  individual.  If  I  decide  that  my  life  must  at  all 
costs  be  beautiful  and  that  beauty  may  be  a  sufficient 
guide  to  conduct,  I  shall  find  that  the  aesthete’  and  the 
‘decadent’  have  already  provided  me  with  a  model :  a 
blind  eye  turned  to  the  ugly  and  the  unpleasant,  a 
deliberate  dwelling  upon  what  is  agreeable,  a  loyalty 
only  to  the  fugitive  beauty  of  separate  experiences  or 


190 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


separate  moments  in  which  we  are  held  only  by  the 
thrill  or  the  flavour  which  each  may  have  to  impart. 
Life  becomes  episodic. 

We  may  express  our  conclusion  in  various  ways.  We 
may  say  that  beauty,  as  a  principle  for  the  ordering  of 
life,  has  not  enough  indubitable  vigour  to  confront  and 
assimilate  its  opposite;  or  we  may  say  that  it  tempts 
us  to  be  content  with  premature  syntheses  and  finalities, 
or,  finally,  that  its  delights  are  so  potent  that  they 
seduce  us  away  into  a  world  of  irresponsible  enjoy¬ 
ment. 

This  account,  I  need  hardly  say,  makes  no  pretence 
of  being  adequate.  We  have  singled  out  for  scrutiny 
only  one  tendency  in  the  total  influence  of  beauty.  We 
do  not  deny  that  there  are  others  which  run  counter 
to  this. 

An  objection  may  be  raised  at  this  point.  We  have 
maintained  (it  will  be  said)  that  the  lover  of  beauty 
may  be  led  astray  by  his  exclusive  devotion  to  beauty, 
so  that  he  becomes  dreamy,  otherworldly,  soft  But  is 
not  this  precisely  the  same  kind  of  danger  to  which 
the  religious  devotee  is  exposed?  How  then  can  we 
expect  to  find  in  this  a  means  for  differentiating  be¬ 
tween  the  mystic  and  the  lover  of  beauty  ? 

The  answer  is,  that  while  mysticism  can  provide  for 
its  own  correction,  the  love  of  beauty  cannot.  Beauty, 
like  religion,  has  “a  power  to  soothe  and  fortify  the 
soul”;  it  can  relax  constraint,  restore  sanity,  and  fill 
in  those  parts  of  the  total  picture  of  life  which  morality 
and  philosophy  and  science  are  forced  to  leave  out.  But 
our  turning  towards  its  various  manifestations  for 


THE  FUTURE  OF  MYSTICISM  191 

solace  and  refreshment  is  largely  instinctive,  and  our 
reward,  from  our  point  of  view,  is  in  consequence  acci¬ 
dental.  Further,  since  we  do  not  know  clearly  what 
we  are  about  when  we  seek  beauty  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing  when  we  are  misusing  or  exploiting  it. 
We  know  so  little  what  we  are  about  that  we  are  often 
ready  to  accept,  as  we  have  already  seen,  as  plausible 
doctrine  the  statement  that  the  end  and  object  of  art 
is  to  give  enjoyment.  The  mystical  method  of  self-re¬ 
covery  is,  by  contrast,  less  instinctive  and  more  de¬ 
liberate.  It  involves  a  prolonged  preparation  in  which 
moral  self-scrutiny,  with  its  rejection  of  all  that  is 
ignoble  and  self-seeking,  holds  the  central  place. 
Whatever  unity  of  mind,  whatever  increment  of  moral 
energy  the  mystic  may  be  seeking,  he  proposes  to  earn, 
as  far  as  that  is  possible.  He  is  determined  to  be  self- 
conscious  and  self-possessed:  he  will  know  where  he 
stands.  It  is,  then,  what  we  may  call  the  moral  in¬ 
gredient  in  his  ambition  that  enables  him  to  distin¬ 
guish  between  what  is  essential  and  what  is  accidental 
in  his  attainment. 

I  do  not  maintain  that  it  is  possible  wholly  to  tran¬ 
scend  the  unconscious  work  of  instinct  in  this  matter  of 
spiritual  self-recovery.  It  must  be  obvious  that  the  mys¬ 
tic  himself  rides  to  harbour  upon  the  wave  of  some 
purely  natural  impulse:  his  deliberate  effort  alone 
would  not  carry  man  far.  For  if  mysticism  is  not  magic 
neither  is  it  industry.  It  is  not  a  manipulation  of  Deity 
for  the  sake  of  producing  effects  clearly  defined  in  ad¬ 
vance.  Much  of  the  mystic  preparation  is  like  prayer  in 
its  uncommercial  and  ideal  forms,  the  prayer  not  for 


192 


A  STUDY  OF  MYSTICISM 


some  specified  benefit  but  for  some  total  good.  The 
mystic  at  the  end  of  his  preparation  is  simply  waiting 
for  an  apparition  and  an  event  which  he  is  careful  not 
to  define  too  particularly;  he  is  waiting,  too,  with  the 
full  consciousness  that  his  own  effort  has  now  carried 
him  as  far  as  it  can  go,  and  that  it  needs  to  be  com¬ 
pleted  by  some  touch  from  without. 

Yet  in  spite  of  this  limitation  the  mystic  is  right,  I 
believe,  in  trying  to  be  as  deliberate  and  as  self-con¬ 
scious  as  possible,  for  the  good  reason  that  an  achieve¬ 
ment  won  by  any  other  means  is  precarious.  What  mys¬ 
tery  and  apparent  accident  have  done  for  us  we  may 
accidentally  and  mysteriously  lose.  It  may  be  that  we 
shall  never  be  able  to  dispense  wholly  with  the  in¬ 
stinctive  and  the  unconscious  in  us,  but,  as  creatures 
endowed  with  intelligence,  we  have  not  been  left  at 
the  mercy  of  these  things.  They  will  always  need  self- 
consciousness  to  complete  them.  The  deliberate  re¬ 
demption  of  the  unconscious,  therefore,  is  an  essen¬ 
tially  humane  task.  And  this  is  the  choice  which  the 
mystics  have  made. 


INDEX 


Abstract  universal,  7,  19,  29. 
Alternation,  17,  18,  124. 

Alvarez  de  Paz,  70. 

Angela  of  Foligno,  72. 
Antinomianism,  34. 

Aristotle,  30,  106,  177. 
Asceticism,  33  n.,  56,  158. 

Babbitt,  Irving,  136  n. 

Bergson,  15,  145. 

Boehme,  36,  71. 

Bosanquet,  B.,  115  n.,  118,  178. 
Bradley,  A.  C.,  96  n. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  115  n. 

Buddhism,  50  ff .,  124  n. 

Butler,  Samuel,  173. 

Capablanca,  100. 

Christianity :  contrasted  with 
Buddhism,  52. 

Church,  172-173,  175. 
Coenesthesia,  17. 

Comte,  5. 

Conscience,  96-97. 
Contemplation,  35  ff.,  47. 

Croce,  96  n. 

Cross,  St.  John  of  the.  See  John 

Dark  Night  of  the  Soul,  60. 
Delacroix,  31  n.,  47,  64  n.,  85  n. 
de  Paz.  See  Alvarez. 

Descartes,  106. 

Detachment,  31  ff.,  172. 

Dualism,  133. 

Eckhart,  46,  47,  64  n. 

Ellis,  H.,  48,  189. 


Emerson,  99. 

Faguet,  E.,  59. 

Fenelon,  27  n.,  38,  59. 

Finite  God,  116,  119. 

Flournoy,  85  n. 

Galsworthy,  173. 

Gautama  Buddha,  33  n. 

Ghazzali,  20. 

Godferneaux,  17-18,  39. 

Grace,  27. 

Guyon,  Mme.,  33  n. 

Happiness,  127  ff. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  121,  122. 
Hedonism,  131  n. 

Hilton,  Walter,  37. 

Hocking,  W.  E.,  vii,  21  n.,  48,  51, 
80,  123-124. 

Hoeffding,  52. 

Humility,  145,  167. 

Infinite,  the  completed,  103-105. 
Inge,  W.  R.,  35  n. 

Immediacy,  89. 

Immortality,  120. 

James,  William,  7,  29,  73,  81  n., 
95,  105,  158. 

Janet,  P.,  9. 

Jefferies,  Richard,  186. 

John  of  the  Cross,  St.,  7,  10,  37, 
52,  59,  60,  65,  72,  78. 

Julian  of  Norwich,  77. 

Karma,  124  n. 


194 


INDEX 


Lao  Tze,  42,  145.  See  Taoism. 
Leuba,  83. 

Loyalty,  150. 

Marina  de  Escobar,  Ven.,  71. 
Monism,  159. 

Montmorand,  B.  de,  85  n. 
Murisier,  24  ff. 

Murray,  Gilbert,  Sir,  158. 

Nietzsche,  127,  158. 

Nirvana,  51,  124  n. 
Non-resistance,  141. 

Omnipotence,  162. 

Origen,  45. 

Palmer,  G.  H.,  21  n. 

Plato,  30,  31,  50,  168,  183,  186. 
Plotinus,  7,  29,  30,  34,  35  n.,  37, 
38,  73. 

Positivism,  5,  120-123. 

Pratt,  J.  B.,  81  n. 

Prayer,  142  ff.,  192. 
Pringle-Pattison,  A.  Seth,  122. 
Puritanism,  185. 

Response,  category  of,  75. 
Restlessness,  religious,  23,  111. 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  73. 
Richard  of  St.  Victor,  36. 

Rolle,  Richard,  37,  80. 

Royce,  Josiah,  19,  91  n.,  119,  150. 
Russell,  George  (“A.  E.”),  142. 
Ruysbroeck,  7,  34  n.,  38,  60-63, 
64. 


Salvation,  21  ff.,  51,  87,  166,  167. 
Santayana,  39. 

Service,  religion  of,  5,  120,  163. 
Seth,  A.  See  Pringle-Pattison. 
Shaw,  G.  B.,  54  n. 

Sheldon,  W.  H.,  103. 

Sin,  22,  143-144. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  107  n. 
Spinoza,  52,  53,  131  n. 

Spiritual  Marriage,  37. 

Stewart,  J.  A.,  182. 

Sturt,  H.,  93-95. 

Substance,  109,  123,  161. 
Suggestibility,  9. 

Superman,  130. 

Suso,  30,  33  n.,  65,  71. 

Synge,  J.  M.,  184. 

Taoism,  49,  124.  See  Lao  Tze. 
Tauler,  64. 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  115  n.,  117-118, 
119  n. 

Teresa,  St.,  7,  36,  42  n.,  69,  71. 
Theologia  Germanica,  32,  34,  46. 
Thoreau,  165. 

Three  Ages,  31. 

Tolstoy,  158. 

Truthfulness,  148. 

Tyrrell,  George,  165. 

Worship,  121,  124. 

Yeats,  W.  B.,  164. 


\ 


Date  Due 

Mr  1  o  v 

/ 

if  19  M' 

7 

F£  r  i  i  ;_i 

!^2jF 

> 

r  D  '  u  *  » 1 

f 

i 

9 

i 


r 


I 


y 


i 


